(Cross posted from Daily Kos, published last Wednesday. I made just a few modifications for this site and no doubt missed others.)
It has been a while since last I posted. ek — the wily ek — convinced me to come here and post this. I thought that it might be provocative despite being meant with affection, but he thought it would be worth your collective time.
It’s a good time to note, by the way, why I haven’t been here much. It’s the same reason I’m not on Open Left, Boo Trib, and countless other progressive blogs: I have simply found that for whatever reason I operate best when I limit myself to one blog; it lets me keep up with the conversations I start. If I switch around, I write diaries and comments that I won’t follow up on for hours, days, weeks, months…. It feels to me as if I’m being rude. So, given my limitation, which I’m glad that others do not share, I contribute only on El Permsimmon Grande, although I’m always (well, almost always) happy to see my Docudharmatic friends there.
Best holiday wishes to you all and I hope that you are happy and hopeful — even if hesitant in ways — over the political transition now underway. I’ll try to come around more and prove myself a liar in the preceding paragraph. If I don’t, feel free to hound me; apparently it works. (And also feel free to port anything I write to here.)
Two years ago on DKos, in the wake of the 2006 election, came a rumbling on the right column of the front page that led to a series of withering assaults on Markos and some of the contributing editors. Two years ago tomorrow, in fact, saw publication of a great example that will give those who were not yet here a sense of the arguments then taking place on the site: “Calling Bullshit on America,” by OPOL. He and I “shared words” in the comments section of that diary and many others; it’s funnier now that we are friends. His diaries — while still pungent and potent — have ratcheted down a little and I have come to better appreciate his talents.
The fight back then was between Pragmatists and Purists. I was one of the loudest Pragmatists commenting on the site. I’m still a pragmatist. And here, today, we hear shouting once again from the right side of the page towards many CEs and others who dare criticize Obama’s choices — and again I find myself disagreeing with my fellow diarists.
I disagree because I don’t think that their position is pragmatic at all.