Daily Kos is a left-wing news site and blog. It permits members to offer commentary of their own. I joined Daily Kos (henceforth DK) back in 2004. It was a great site back then, chock full of interesting information and insightful analysis. The stories were written by people who really knew their stuff, and the discussions were rich with nuance. There were trolls, of course, but they were mostly ignored. The real substance of DK lay in the points and counterpoints that were bandied about. I participated in the discussions and learned a lot from it. But my participation waned over the years. DK went through a lot of changes. Recently, however, I made a few comments in a discussion. I was stunned by the firestorm of invective my comments triggered. My comments were in no wise rude or uncivil; my comments were mostly just quibbles on fine points. But I was viciously attacked for all manner of crimes.
Now, I’m no stranger to controversy, and I relish a well-managed disagreement. But these people responded to a few firecrackers with H-bombs. The intensity of their objections triggered a punitive action against me: I was forbidden to contribute anything for four days.
I decided that I needed to determine just how serious the problem was, so I concocted an experiment. I wrote a lengthy essay offering a controversial idea. I wrote it carefully, with nothing uncivil or disparaging of anybody, and the hypothesis it presented was intellectually robust. It triggered another storm of vitriol against me. They were furious that I would dare present such a heretical idea on DK. Some demanded that I be banned forever from DK. I concluded that DK was no longer a place of honest discussion; it had degenerated to a left-wing mirror of the worst right-wing fanatics. It would seem that the left has been so scarred by the outrages of the right that they are now adopting the “kill or be killed” mentality of the right. This bodes ill for America. Perhaps this represents a splinter group within the left; perhaps the centrists of Democratic Party under Mr. Biden will retain control and keep the country on an even keel. Let us hope that the leftists of DK never win any political power; they would treat everybody else with the same contempt that Mr. Trump treated others.
Here is my original essay:
Let’s trace the broad history of the status of African-Americans in America. It begins with the long period of slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves, and for a short period in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War black people experienced a dramatic improvement in their condition. However, this was quickly followed by the Jim Crow era, which reduced African-Americans to second-class citizenship. Regular lynchings added to the oppression. The film “Birth of a Nation” led to even more lynchings during the 1920s. Over 3,400 blacks were lynched between 1888 and 1964.
However, the status of blacks improved dramatically in the aftermath of World War II. In 1948, President Truman issued an executive order desegregating the armed forces. In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that African-Americans could not be segregated in educational institutions. The civil rights movements went from triumph to triumph, culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
But then progress slowed. For forty years, there was little substantial progress. The next step came from, of all places, Silicon Valley: the introduction of smartphones with the capability to record video made it possible to record police misbehavior. Over the last decade, the standard police excuse that “the suspect violently resisted arrest” has been shattered by an avalanche of videos proving outrageous behavior by some police officers. What with smartphones, body cameras, and security cameras, the “blue wall” has been demolished. The majority of police officers are no longer willing to defend the bad apples with their silence.
Yet the outrages continue. We still see videos of racist attacks every day. Why?
The standard hypothesis, which has been in place since the civil rights era, is that there remain plenty of racists in our society, and that the solution must be to punish or shame them into righteousness. Some people have extended the standard hypothesis to claim that American society is “systemically racist” — that racism is so deeply embedded in American society that it is now part of every white American’s psyche.
Right or wrong, this hypothesis has not led us to any solution. Despite great progress in so many areas of society, we just can’t seem to expunge society of racism. This has been our working hypothesis for over fifty years, and we have made less progress during that time than we made during the twenty years following World War II.
I suggest that our mistake lies with our hypothesis as to the cause of the problems we see. To put it briefly, the problem isn’t racism — it’s xenophobia.
Racism Versus Xenophobia
Please indulge me as I delve into a careful explanation of the difference between racism and xenophobia. Racism is animus directed against members of another race. Xenophobia is animus directed towards members of groups other than one’s own. Thus, racism is a subset of xenophobia. There are numerous facts that contradict the hypothesis that Americans are racist while supporting the hypothesis that Americans are xenophobic. The best example is simple: if Americans bear ill-will towards African-Americans, then why did they elect an African-American to be President? Indeed, Americans respect and admire a great many African-Americans; here are just a few:
Oprah Winfrey, Halle Berry, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Beyonce, Michelle Obama, Will Smith, Kobe Bryant, Denzel Washington, Eddie Murphy, Whoopi Goldberg, Maya Angelou, Arthur Ashe, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Jr., Colin Powell, Thurgood Marshall, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Kamala Harris, Condaleezza Rice, Andrew Young, and Jesse Jackson.
Here’s another way of looking at the problem: is religious sectarianism, such as the animus between Hindus and Muslims in India, or that hatred that Sunnis and Shiites share for each other, any different in substance from racism? If this behavior is operationally indistinguishable from racism, then are they merely different labels for the same phenomena?
You can find xenophobia all over the world. Here in America, we have videos of African-Americans attacking Asians. Is this racism or xenophobia? Columbians hate Venezuelan immigrants; in Guyana, the Indo-Guyanese people and the Afro-Guyanese people are at each other’s throats. The government of Bhutan has been expelling ethnic Nepalis. In the 1990s, Yugoslavia broke up and Serbs, Croatians, and Kosovars began killing each other. Who can forget the massacres of Tutsis by Hutus in Rwanda? The Japanese politely and gently discriminate against almost everybody else. The Koreans are most seriously unwelcoming to others. Gypsies and Jews have long been persecuted in Europe. And of course, Africa is a cauldron of inter-tribal antipathies and wars.
There is a solid reason for the universality of xenophobia in Homo Sapiens: it dates from the early history of the species. Back when early hominids were roaming the savannas of eastern Africa, strangers were always bad news. They were usually scouts from a competing tribe probing for new hunting grounds. If you didn’t chase them off or kill them, they would eventually drive you out of your own territories. It was always best to kill strangers.
A Better Way
If in fact the problem is not racism but xenophobia, then a better solution presents itself: reduce the “xeno” element. If people look like you, talk like you, dress like you, and act like you, then they’re not really strangers, are they? We humans love to differentiate ourselves through all manner of external signs. Attire is one; hair styles and body decorations are another; language is an important element. The Old Testament explains our use of the word “shibboleth”. The Israelites had defeated an army of invading Gileadites, who fled in disorder. The Israelites, moving quickly, secured all the fords over the Jordan River. When a Gileadite refugee came to a ford, pretending to be an Israelite, the Israelite guards would demand that he say the word “shibboleth”. The Gileadite would say “sibboleth”, because their language did not include the “sh” sound. Whereupon the guards would execute the refugee. Language is one of the most powerful means by which we separate US from THEM.
Compare these two gentlemen:
I’m sure you’ll agree that most white people (and probably most Asians and Latin Americans) would feel more comfortable speaking with the gentleman on the left. The gentleman on the right presents as most definitely NOT part of the mainstream American culture. His appearance shouts “I’m not like you at all! I am completely different!” To put it another way, his appearance clearly says “Don’t think of me as one of your ‘US’; I’m ‘THEM’ to you.”
The gentleman on the right is like a Gileadite running up to the Israelite guards screaming “Sibboleth! Sibboleth!” at the top of his lungs. He’s like a Jewish man wearing a yarmulke and loudly singing “Hava Nagila” breaking into a Nazi Party meeting in Munich in 1935. He’s like a member of Antifa breaking into a Proud Boys meeting while burning an American flag. This is NOT how you win friends and influence people.
The gentleman on the right dresses himself, decorates his body, and uses language that defines him as a member of a group strikingly different from what most Americans think of as “our people”. Is it any wonder, then, that they consider him to be an outsider? That’s what he wants!
A solution
One solution, then, is to abandon efforts to alienate oneself from society and instead endeavor to join society. This would entail a rejection of the motley collection of notions that are sometimes called “black culture”. In truth, there is no single “black culture” — there is a wide range of practices that some African-Americans embrace and some reject. Sometimes these work, sometimes they don’t. A good example is Kwanza, an artificial “Christmas” cooked up in 1966 as a rival to Western Christmas. It was a rather clumsy artifice, and has now lost most of its adherents.
Consider this: people from many different cultures have immigrated to the USA, and most of these have enjoyed success. English, Germans, Poles, French, Italians, Greeks, Russians, Swedes, Vietnamese, Chinese, Indians, and many others have come and built happy new lives by blending in with the mainstream culture. Most retain some symbolic components of their old culture: St. Patrick’s Day, Cinco de Mayo, Chinese New Year, Hanukkah. But not African-Americans; they’re still stuck at the bottom while everybody else climbs the ladder. I believe that some African-Americans have suffered this fate because they choose not to join mainstream American culture.
Why can’t we just live our lives and be left alone?
This is a good counterargument: why can’t African-Americans simply live their lives in their own culture, speaking their own language and dressing their own way and not bothering anybody or being bothered?
While this may seem like a reasonable request, it has never worked out in practice, because you’re never separated from the people with whom you live. Throughout the entirety of human history, no society has ever suffered an alien society to thrive in its midst. The few exceptions to this rule demonstrate just how serious it is.
The experience of the Jews in Christendom for the last 1300 years is a story played over and over in a loop. The Jews settle in a town and provide valuable financial services greatly appreciated by the rulers and businessmen. They prosper and their wealth becomes increasingly conspicuous. Moreover, they refuse to mix with the locals, maintaining their own households, synagogues, and rituals. Eventually popular resentment of their success boils over and the mobs destroy, burn, and kill. Jewish refugees hit the road in search of a new abode, and the cycle begins again. In the 19th century most Western governments eliminated legal segregation of Jews, congratulating themselves on their open-mindedness. Then came the Holocaust. Oops. A better solution came only with the creation of a Jewish state two thousand years after the destruction of their original home.
The exigencies of trade necessitated the presence of representatives of distant nations in a trading city. The standard solution to this problem was the establishment of “merchant quarters”: sections of the city assigned to the exclusive use of merchants from other nations. In many cities, such quarters were walled off, entry and exit going through a few guarded gates. This was as much to protect the merchants as the citizens of the city. In some cities, the merchant quarters operated under their own laws. They were, in effect, tiny sovereign communities. There were, of course, many variations on the theme, but the common element was the segregation of foreigners from the natives. That was the only scheme that permitted an alien society to survive in a foreign land.
Returning to police
So what does this tell us about police treatment of African-Americans? Remember that, above all, police are the enforcers of our social system as expressed in its laws. Their purpose is to protect society from those who would violate its values. People like the gentleman on the right of the above photographs are loudly declaring to the world that they reject the mores of mainstream America. Their appearance sets off warning bells in the minds of mainstreamers: “This guy is dangerous.” I suspect that the incitement of fear is deliberate. Police officers get the message, too; they have every reason to fear violent resistance to their authority.
And in fact, violent resistance is one of the depressingly common themes we see in so many of those videos that end with the death of a black man. I don’t know how many times I have thought to myself, “No! Don’t fight back! Just do what the officer says!” while watching one of these videos. Of course, I don’t know how many times that black men obey the police and are not shot. I have also seen a few cases in which a black man did not resist, and was killed nonetheless. For example, George Floyd, the victim notoriously murdered by a police officer kneeling on his neck, had stopped resisting, yet was still subjected to lethal force. I have seen no statistical studies on the role of resistance in shootings, and I doubt that a rigorous study could be carried out. How does one define “resistance”? How much time can pass between the act of resistance and the murder before we disassociate the two? This is messy stuff.
We have now reached the sad state in which history teaches black people to expect abuse by police, while history teaches police officers to expect violence from black suspects. Past experience drives us into a self-defeating cycle. That makes the problem even harder to resolve.
Too many people have died. Too much damage has been done. The old methods aren’t working. It is imperative that we try something new, and integrating blacks into our society seems to me to be our best option.
Here are the comments from the peanut gallery. Notice how many want to shut me up.
Why can’t it be both racism and xenophobia?
You mean the diarist?
This entire argument comes down to blaming Black people for being murdered by white police officers. It is “blame the victim” writ large. However if we extend your argument I want to know why you don’t speak an indigenous language, aren’t enrolled in an Indigenous Nation, don’t speak an Indigenous language, and why don’t you come to powwows? I guess the police are free to shoot you for practicing all these ridiculous European cultural practices. Why haven’t you blended in and become like my people?
You need to take this down.
To test your conjecture that it's general xenophobia, not just racism, do cops shoot unarmed men dressed as orthodox Jews, turbaned Sikhs, or robed Muslims more often than crew cut, white guys in plaid shirts and dungarees? I doubt we have enough samples to tell.
What we do know is that Native Americans are more than three times as likely to get shot by cops, followed by black Americans (2.6x), lagged a lot by Hispanics (1.3x).
I suppose you could also make a case for income level being the most significant factor, though to me, that explanation simply fails the smell test.
And regarding the suited older man vs. the "Yo, sup" guy, I, personally, would not put up those contrasting photos to make a point because it's too readily seen as perhaps suggestive of one's own xenophobia (or racism). However, if I were a racist cop, I might also be thinking, which guy could I more easily get away with taking down?
This guy? Why isn’t he banned yet?
After 17 years they’ve built up a lot of inertia. Eventually fbojo > fstatic will be reached and they’ll be sliding to Bojotown.
Not even a time out. I’ve seen less offensive co…
Circular.
What is this outside group, we are citizens of this country? Oh black people? We are "outsiders" because we are black. That is racisim. Lame.
Attempting to use xenophobia as a defense or deflection mechanism for said racism. Tired!
Chock full of every white nationalist trope of cultural superiority. Sheer caucasity!
Integrating blacks into society? Do we have no agency and by what right is it YOUR society rather than OURS?
White nationalist trash pretending at some meandering and phony "white man's burden" bullshit. Your evil culture needs to die.
Too many of the viral videos show POC in normal, everyday US attire while being assaulted by police, for this hypothesis to carry any weight. And then you have some of the most disreputable looking white guys brandishing guns and striking police and not getting shot, which which pretty well shoots this hypothesis completely down.
Or the engineer with a large paycheck who goes into the bank to cash his check and the bank called the police on him because he is “suspicious".
As a POC, I am deeply offended by this diary; it is totally fucked up on so many levels. I don't even know where to begin.This is the kind of shit I would expect to see from Tucker Carlson. Seriously, WTF!
That army officer assaulted for the “crime” of driving his new car was following all the “white rules”. He was well dressed, drove a nice car, tried to surrender peacefully.. and still got terrorized and maced. The problem is *NOT* with how black people look, act, or speak. It never has been. It has always been about the group in power afraid to give up one tiny iota of that power to a different group. Men not wanting to give up power to women, straights not wanting to give up power to gays, etc.
When he added the side by side pictures of the “ acceptable “ black person vs. the “unacceptable “ black person...🤬😳🧐 This whole diary explains a lot about his comments in other diaries.
Unfortunately for us, this attitude is not unusual among white people, liberal or otherwise.
Filthy racism dressed up with pseudo-intellectual arguments. The Daily Stormer and your future as a blogger are that way ================================>
(to the far right) And don’t let the door hit you.
There is so much wrong with your arguments. Your belief that doing harm to other humans is innate rather than learned behavior is at the bottom of it. Humans evolved to be very plastic creatures, and so they can be taught to believe very stupid things, as witnessed every day by the Republican party. Don't blame victims for how they dress or look, blame the people who teach and practice hate.
Who wrote this diary? Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, or Tucker Carlson? Or maybe it was Rush Limbaugh with another Tales From the Crypt.
Let's see.
Jews were tolerated for the fact that they did not have the same religious strictures on money lending that christians did in Europe. They also historically dealt in easily fungible assets due to the fact that they were driven out of areas due to cultura/religiousl differences. They built their culture there on that. Look where it got them. They are still living with the labels. Even in America.
Natives Americans, north and south, were nearly annhialated for not assimilating to their christian foes. They are now an apartheid state in north America. Much like the Palestinians. They are denied almost everything that people need to thrive under capitalism, like access to mortgage lending.
Africans were enslaved and brought here and then not allowed to better themselves for centuries because of cheap labor. They did have time, centuries, to develop their own culture here. They were denied the generational accumulation of wealth. Even after they were supposedly freed they were still not free. They have never been successfully integrated into American society even though they want to be. Even religiously they are probably one of the more devout cultures in the USA. They were not victims of genocide, at least they have that going for them.
So what has christianity tought us? Respect the guys in the suit and tie?
BTW. I will never understand why people want to tie a rope around their neck (a tie) in order to be respected. There's had got to be some strange psychological reason because it sure is uncomfortable to wear one.
This is some seriously racist shit.
Is this serious? “Outsiders” just need to assimilate and all will be dandy? That makes no sense on many levels and is offensive on many others.
Wow, well I was all with you on your xenophobia versus racism hypothesis. However, instead of suggesting outsiders change themselves to fit in better, I would suggest all people open their minds and heart and take the time and energy to get to know outsiders as people allowing them to be judged on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin or their outward appearance.
Racism, xenophobia, xenophobia, racism, let’s call the whole thing off.
Gah!!!!!!! One is old and in a suit? One is young and dressing like a a kid? What did the diaryist look like as a teen?
The diarist must live in a gated community and not spend any time on the streets mingling with the masses. The picture on the right that you demeaned with some sort of asinine quote you made up in your head can easily be seen in any commercial gym. Tats are common among gym rats all across cultures. I have had discussions about training regimes with men who looked like that wherein they were very articulate and knew their shit.
Donald Trump wears a suit and is dumber than shit.
BTW, the race cards used in Rwandan massacre were based on anthropometric studies done by Belgian scientists to designate one of the tribes as being superior. They did that because there were ruins in the area indicative of an “advanced” civilization. Because, like you, they could not conceive that these structures were from inferior Africans — you know, people who wear dreads and paint their skin — they used anthropometrics — a junk science you would be good at — to conclude that one of the tribes resulted from the mixing of a lost “white” race and Africans.
Oh, and unlike you, one of my Senegalese friends went to Rwanda to help give the slaughtered a proper burial. She told me that it was nigh on impossible for her to distinguish the two tribes. Coming from a person who can tell a Bambara from a Serer, that says a lot.
You, on the other hand, would have a hard time distinguishing your ass from a hole in the ground.
I see that you claim the be versed in physics. So you may, indeed, have intelligence.
However, there is that saying about a supercomputer:
“garbage in equals garbage out”
It is imperative that we try something new, and integrating blacks into our society seems to me to be our best option.
I see what you did there. Did you?
We, our society = white people.
”Blacks” = outsiders, not members of society.
Sometimes paternalistic condescension is worse than flat out racism. Who do you think did a lot of the actual work to build this society you so blithely claim Black Americans need accepted into? Aside from the assumption that your entire audience is like you/ “we” and not “blacks”.
I’m wondering if this person simply doesn’t live in a situation where he comes into contact with black people.
Or if he knows just what he’s saying and is saying it in bad faith.
This is one of those situations that I believe a diarist shouldn’t have been HR’ed, but am not of a mind to uprate. I don’t think diarist means any real harm, but it’s such a dumbass clueless diary. Been here for a while, and doesn’t appear to be a right wing troll, but is definitely someone who doesn’t get it.
Have you read some recent comments by this poste…
Oh, fuck no. Flagged for overt racism. Demanding that people adopt your preferred appearance and behavior is the epitome of racism. If this doesn’t get you banned, then our rules are meaningless.
Cookie cutters are fine for cookies — I think not for this species.
We need to integrate white supremacists into our society, but they’re going to have to give up the white supremacy/white/privilege/white paranoia first.
Paraphrasing: “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a white supremacist to enter civilized society. “
Biodiversity is necessary for the survival of a species. Cultural diversity I think is also necessary.
The best example is simple: if Americans bear ill-will towards African-Americans, then why did they elect an African-American to be President? Indeed, Americans respect and admire a great many African-Americans; here are just a few:
Not this canard. All it showed was that there were enough people who weren’t racist to elect a black president. It doesn’t in any way invalidate the idea that racism exists and is a problem. You’re ignoring all the racist attacks against Obama. Rush Limbaugh played “Barack the Magic Negro” on his show, there were many racist depictions of Obama.
Oprah Winfrey, Halle Berry, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Beyonce, Michelle Obama, Will Smith, Kobe Bryant, Denzel Washington, Eddie Murphy, Whoopi Goldberg, Maya Angelou, Arthur Ashe, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Jr., Colin Powell, Thurgood Marshall, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Kamala Harris, Condaleezza Rice, Andrew Young, and Jesse Jackson.
For one, these are celebrities. People are perfectly happy to watch them on movies, on TV and in the court. They may not want them living next door, especially if they didn’t know who they were. And you’re overlooking all the racism that they’ve been subjected to. If you were to ask them, they could tell you all about it.
Michelle Obama has been the target of many racist attacks. There are a great many people who still hate Harriet Tubman. Martin Luther King? Seriously? Didn’t you pay attention? Yes, many Americans admire MLK, but many hated them.
You claim that looking and dressing like everyone else would make black people would make the “xenophobes” go away, but black people are subject to racist attacks even when they look like everyone else. A black person drives a nice car? Must be a drug dealer! If your claims that racist attacks are really just xenophobic attacks against people who dress differently, we’d see white people who dress unusually subject to the same kinds of attacks — and we don’t.
Fascism — an ideology that venerates a set…
The diarist has repeatedly patted himself on the back for how “rational” he is. Being rational is a good goal to strive for, but thinking that it’s a trait you have rather than something you do leads to Dunning-Kruger. “I am right because I’m smart” leads to some dumb ideas. The diarist doesn’t look at anything that would contradict his hypothesis and ignores the racism the black people who “assimilate” experience. If he were correct, the concept of being “uppity” wouldn’t exist.
If it’s just xenophobia then why does it persist even in area which are majority Black, Latino, etc.? Surely police in those neighborhoods would be so used to seeing “Other Culture” that they’d be comfortable with it. I’ve heard tons of stories about Hispanic men automatically assumed to be gardeners and Black women assumed maids instead of being the owners of nice houses. How is that xenophobia? How could they be “less Other” (a.k.a. more White) than being a suburban home owner in a good neighborhood?
Do you place misogyny in the xenophobic subfolder as well? How do you explain my married coworkers with daughters who insist that women are worth less than men? Surely being in households full of females they’d be so used to women that they wouldn’t hold such “xenophobic” beliefs.
This is scarily like the cultural assassinations perpetuated on Native Americans and Aboriginals — just take them from their culture, raise them in the “majority” culture, and “civilize them” so they won’t be discriminated against. Guess what? They weren’t discriminated against any less. All that happened was they lost pieces of themselves by losing their heritage.
Talk about victim blaming! “Well, that police officer wouldn’t have pepper sprayed you if only you were named James instead of Jamal.” “If you tamed your hair instead of keeping it natural, you would have gotten that job.” “If you’d been wearing a three piece suit instead of a t-shirt and jeans while walking in your neighborhood, you wouldn’t have been told to stop trespassing.” “If you just kept your head down instead of speaking against racism, you wouldn’t be labeled as an ‘Angry Black Guy’ all the time.”
Meh.
You need to stop talking.
All this is just an expression of your butthurt for facing consequences when you came sideways at a Black woman elder with VERY ugly racism.
You do not remotely have the range to lecture to anyone on matters of race, and certainly not to BIPOC who live the systems and structures and assaults and effects genocidal colonialism and violent white supremacy every day of our lives. Sit down, put aside your fragile white male ego, and start learning something about reality in this country for the first time in your privileged life.
[And don’t at me about the age you keep flaunting like some automatic mark of [white] wisdom: The Black elder you insulted is older than you are, and wiser, too. So is my husband, on both counts, and he never had the benefit of your whiteness or your education. If he can learn daily, so can you.]
I wrote one response explaining that I was walking away from DK:
My essay has generated 37 responses so far, and I am sad to say that they tend to confirm my hypothesis that the intellectual vigor of the DK community has declined. When I first joined DK, it was chock full of great information and penetrating analysis. I learned a great deal here in those years. It also hosted some great discussions exploring many differing points of view on complex issues.
That is no longer the case. With one exception, the responses here are all pathetically flawed. Some express personal animosity towards me without addressing the content of the essay. Some dismiss the content as “fucked” (such an informative term! 😄) without actually explaining anything. Some reveal that the author has overlooked a point made clear in the essay. Some make the common error of relying on a single counterexample to challenge the hypothesis.
The exception came from the fellow who cited the recent incident in which an Army officer was assaulted by a police officer despite wearing his fatigues and initially respecting the police officer’s orders. I should have addressed that incident. The key point that so many miss is that the offending police officer was fired after an internal investigation. The fact that murders take place in our society does not mean that our society is murderous; the fact that individual acts of racism take place does not mean that our society is racist.
A surprising conclusion from these responses is that DK has transformed from an intellectual forum into a social fan club. I was astounded by the number of people who cited comments I have made elsewhere. This implies that the commentariat here is small and intensely active. It appears that they have successfully chased away everybody who fails to toe their narrow party line, and in this case, they have succeeded again. It’s obvious that this community has nothing to offer me but vitriol, and that I have nothing to offer a community that holds intellectual integrity in contempt.
Best wishes to all.
So there it is; make of it what you will.
Post Scriptum
It didn’t take them long to ban my response shown immediately above. The message I got from the system advised me that this response violates their rules. Apparently their rules forbid criticism of the community. Somebody has also claimed that I have been banned from Daily Kos; I have received no confirmation of this from DK, but I certainly expect it. They can’t allow people to publish anything that contradicts the party line! 😀
Oh, and they haven’t banned any of the comments spouting personal invective at me.
April 17th, 2021
