I have stopped and started this diary many times today, stopped and started a comment in the diary in question many times. I have tried to sum up my...discomfort with what happened today in the highly commented on, highly recommended "You don't have the standing" diary. I have gotten pretty much all the way through it, and reading it left me with a nasty pit in my stomach. Its a very alienating feeling watching so many of your compatriots miss the point so entirely, and boil skepticism and criticism about Sen. Bernie Sanders and his message about people of color down to basically trollery of our website.
Is this really the route that we want to go down, dkos? Really? Questioning the motives of people who are 4x as likely in this country to walk out their front door and be shot dead in the street by roving gangs of thugs simply because they want to know more Sanders' position on this crucial issue? Calling them "supposed progressives" and throwing all sorts of shade about being secret sycophants only here to disrupt, nothing more?
Is that what you really think of the criticisms of Senator Sanders? That its all just some campaign to bring the man down? That is a bridge too far.
There is a fucking reason why some in this country are skeptical of any and every politician running for president. Black people on average are dying at far higher rates than that of whites due to police violence. Period. They have every friggin' right to ask a candidate, no, demand that a candidate at least acknowledge that this problem exists outside of talking about employment rates and income levels. Bernie got that and recovered from his reaction at NN.
This community, on the other hand, is as much in a huff as it was 5 minutes after Sen. Sanders' NN appearance. We're still trying to cover for his imperfection and alienating so much potential support around us without fucking realizing the candidate himself has recovered. We're still sitting here calling all criticisms FUCKING LIES, instead of putting pressure on our preferred candidate to continue to improve. Yes, thats right. Continue to improve. Meaning he wasn't perfect in the first place. Nobody, especially no politician, is.
So is it deceit, or lying, or bullshit lies or any of that when someone expresses skepticism that Bernie actually gets it? Hell no. It makes sense, absolute sense, given the amount of violent deaths unarmed black folk have had to endure from our modern police forces.
Go ahead and boil it all down to derail Bernie Sanders. Its not about him, and it never was. Dailykos made it about him. It is about the essential problem -- innocent black people have a 4x more likely chance to be summarily executed at the hands of police for simply existing. This debate is more fucking important than shaming Bernie supporters, or Clinton supporters winning blog points, or this or that or the other person stupid issue on dailykos pertaining to the primaries. Its bigger than any one candidate, blogger, blog owner, or internet persona out there. And boiling it down to just another disgusting dkos pie fight is insulting and shameful.
Now this ardent Bernie supporter will see you 8/9 in Ptown.
