A Pirates Life for Me…
I should have waited until Talk Like a Pirate Day, but this just couldn’t wait.
Below you will see links to all the therapy that I wrote leading up to and through the 2016 primary and convention. That was until I wrote the straw that broke the camel’s back. I do not know if it was this one particular post…or the body of work that made this the terminal point for my relationship with Daily Kos, but it did the trick. The title of this piece may seem arcane, cryptic and obtuse, but let me explain. I finally got confirmation that I had been banned by Daily Kos only recently when I finally looked at my status rather than reaching out and e-mailing Daily Kos believing that there was some technical problem with my account. They never responded. There it was. The Skull and Cross Bones or as I interpreted it, the Jolly Roger. I am TOXIC…to DK anyway.
In some ways I feel like this is a cop-out and a “re-tread” writing. I mean, I did originally write this way, way back in 2016. It’s not the years…it’s the mileage. But it’s important to gauge the context. You be the judge. I really, really, REALLY want your feedback.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/8/4/1556607/-I-AM-ridiculous
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/5/4/1522947/-A-Question-of-Legitmacy
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/12/10/1458919/-On-the-Edge-of-the-Abyss
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/11/25/1454173/-The-First-Presidential-Act
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/8/17/1412715/-It-s-not-there
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/8/6/1409352/-Fair-Game
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/7/30/1407157/--You-re-so-money
(Originally posted on Daily Kos, August 4, 2016)
Before it fades into our collective bruised memories, I think it’s important to take note of something. Of all the moments in all the speeches given at the Democratic National Convention, one stands out in my mind: the assertion by Sarah Silverman that I, as a Bernie or Buster, am “being ridiculous.” Well, Sarah, I have an admission. I am ridiculous.
Electoral Smoke and Mirrors
If one takes the root of the word ridiculous, you find it to be ridicule. While I was not there, I was watching in disgust and rage as the delegates pledged to Bernie Sanders were ridiculed, derided and trivialized by a Democratic establishment whose practices were shown to be unbalanced and duplicitous…at best. As the caucuses and primaries ground through the early states, time and time again Sanders supporters were met with systems that were closed to the will of the people or functionally deficient to their purpose. These systems spat upon the will of ALL the voters…independent and Democratic alike. This unfair and tilted playing field that had been rigged by the DNC continued through to California where the Mother of all election frauds was perpetrated, by a Clinton surrogate, Secretary of State, Alex Padilla. As a point of affirmation of this assertion, I offer the lawsuits below that are currently grinding their way through the legal system.(TrustVote links).
Of course though, this Bernie or Buster is being RIDICULOUS. It was a completely level electoral playing field….riiiight.
Ridiculous Justice
I suppose I am being RIDICULOUS because I believe a criminal justice system should dispense justice, not act as a revenue extraction arm of the government and a promulgator of itself. The criminal justice complex has become an industry unto itself whose primary purpose is expansion, fee collection, and community suppression. More subtly, the Criminal Justice problems are just the most obvious and brutal example of a larger and more insidious problem. Criminal justice is the enforcement arm of the laws that our government implements. This governmental system no longer views citizens as entities to be served and protected, but as hosts to be parasitized. We exist to be feasted upon by the many bureaucracies that comprise “the government.” It could be state, local or federal…no matter, the same intrusion and coercion apply. I believe that citizens have the right, duty and responsibility to reign in and control the bureaucracies. Criminal “justice” is only one arm of government that has come to have excessive control over our lives. I am ridiculous that way.
Money in Politics
Now, to the best estimates, we can look to 13 million people voted for Bernie Sanders in the primaries and caucuses. Countless more would have voted for him and his progressive beliefs if we had open primaries that were actually interested in the will of the people. Given the marginalized state of progressive principles prior to the 2016 primaries, this was a very impressive accomplishment.
Running for elective office is an expensive undertaking. Sanders was able to fuel his campaign with an average donation of…as we all now know: $27. This innovative revolution in financing a major campaign will probably be remembered as one of its major accomplishments. Now, it’s no longer debatable: HRC and the Democratic National Convention won by rigging the system in her favor. I can only speak as a resident of California, but the lawsuits concerning the audits by the Registrars of Voters of the various counties are going forward and will take time to work their way through the court system. These lawsuits are raising significant concerns about the validity of the California primary. The fact that Sanders did as well as he did, given the knowing deceitf of the DNC, makes the achievement of garnering 13 million votes, and victory in 23 states all the more impressive. Now, am I going to vote for the candidate who rigs the game and pays for it with corporate SuperPAC donations or am I going to vote for the candidate who renews my faith in representative democracy by voicing authentic progressive concerns. Not a hard choice. I guess I am just ridiculous that way.
Ridicule
The last point of the Bernie or Bust ridiculousness is something rather intangible and ethereal. Ironically, it concerns ridicule. Going back to the first Clinton administration, there has been an ever growing marginalization, trivialization, and ridiculing of fundamental working-class, progressive values. We had a respite from this marginalization during the Obama administration. Or so we thought. Actually, our progressive values were used to play us for chumps. Then Sarah, we really were, or at least felt, ridiculous. So when Bernie or Busters say, enough is enough, we are fed up…we are NOT ridiculous. Thomas Frank had a searing observation about how progressives have been treated by the Democratic party over the last 20 years. In his book, “Listen Liberal” he goes into great deal about the concept of “counter scheduling” that the Clinton’s cynically used to great effect. Fundamentally, they knew that progressives had no place else to go. The Republicans certainly weren’t going to embrace these values and it allowed the Clinton’s to bargain away progressive interests and principles with impunity and still get their votes because their was no other game left in town. So, after 20 years of being “counter scheduled” into accepting the crumbs of the innovative class of the ascendent, we Bernie or Busters are perfectly willing to be ridiculous in the defense of the values brought back to life by the Sanders Campaign.
Perhaps, I am being hard on you Sarah. I will close with the piece of advice: when you’re trying to persuade someone to your point of view, you don’t insult them, you empathize with them. And you certainly don’t call them ridiculous.
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I don’t recall thinking after I posted the “Silverman” piece…for want of a better term, that it was really that offensive, let alone would lead me to be booted from the Daily Kos. If I had taken the time to actually read some of the comments left on the post, I probably would have taken the clue and gotten the message. Perhaps, I didn’t bother with an evaluation of the overarching environment that I was writing in, or the pointedly snide comments that were left as response and critique, because quite frankly, I really didn’t care. Any observations or incites that I provided for others was just gravy. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was mainly just therapy for myself to process the tumult and injustice of the moment. If you got something out of it…great.
I cannot provide a fair and unbiased evaluation of my own work. I leave that to the few people who read these therapeutic rants. But this is different than just a simple take it or leave it proposition. This is a question of censure and censorship. This is my first attempt at audience participation so bear with me. I make no argument with the right of Daily Kos to kick me off. It’s their sandbox and if I’m not building my rhetorical standards then, by all means, I will take my banishment from such a small-minded entity and wear it as a badge of honor.
As the “moderator1” finally informed me,
“From: Moderator1 (Support staff)
You were banned for your #NeverHillary posts and ceaseless pie-fighting. We’re sure there’s a more appropriate venue for your writings than ours.”
Moderator1 is correct. There are plenty of appropriate venues for me to post my rants. These are namely places with enough resilience to handle the relatively mild yet accurate words that are the manifestations of my thoughts. If being banned from Daily Kos means that I am exiled from self-reinforcing, echo chamber of delusion that is fearful of strong and fervent opinions, then….SO….BE…IT.
I leave you with an irony about this absurd episode. Because, after the Democratic Convention, I was so disgusted with the entire process, I didn’t write anything. I had heard too many stories of Sanders delegates being disrespected, marginalized and shouted down at the Convention in Philadelphia to have any great hope of the Clinton campaign being some unifying force for the Sanders supporters to embrace. As far as the Clinton campaign was concerned, it was our way or the highway. “We’re going to serve you up chicken shit and you’re going to eat it like it’s chicken salad…and like it, GOT IT? Regardless, we don’t really need your help anyway, we’ve got this.” For the briefest of times, I had even #DemExited to the Greens to show my disgust with the Democratic party.
So where is the irony? Well, as we got closer and closer to the General election in November 2016, it became clearer and clearer that this WAS going to be a real race. Clinton was such an awful candidate and it was such a poorly run campaign and there were so many compromising variables at play…you know the story plays out. So, as I began to realize this, I also came to the realization that even if one hated Clinton, you still needed to vote for her…because Trump, and his racist fascists were SOO much worse. I was readying one of my therapeutic rants which basically said that if you are in one of the swing states…or one that is even close to being a swing state, that it was your RESPONSIBILITY to vote for Clinton to block Trump. I, of course, having won the geographic lottery could cast a protest vote for Jill Stein in the state of California where Clinton was assured of victory. And you guessed it, just as I was about to post this compromising reversal of position, it was then that I learned that I had been blocked and booted by the Daily Kos. One might infer a huge sense of ego and delusion on my part. My believing that my words had an influencing effect on ANYONE. Believe me. That is not the case. I still saw my writing as a therapeutic outlet for my very legitimate angst.
I will just leave you with this final thought: how unfortunate it is that when we are at a period when we need people from diverse and divergent perspectives to come together to resist and fight for a different reality, that there are weak, brittle entities such as Daily Kos that fear freedom of expression instead of embracing it.
Rules were always meant to be known intimately, because without rules, there is no structure. Of course, that intimate knowledge comes in very useful when you arrive at that point in time when you need to destroy those structures and grind them into the dust of the past. It is the only way that something can be built anew.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2013/08/23/1233352/-New-community-guidelines-final-draft
