I haven't posted for several days and I have only looked in a few times. I don't know when [View all]

[Atticus]

Last edited Sat Feb 29, 2020, 09:04 AM - Edit history (1)

or even if that will change. This post may get canned because I'm sure some won't think it appropriate.

I genuinely do not like to say unkind things and I hesitate to add to the negativity here, but I also don't like ignoring reality. Add to these my lifetime aversion to abiding fools and my absence from DU this past week is easily understood.

We are no longer a community of mostly like-minded people striving to rise above the well-funded bullshit and devise ways to make our country---and the world---a better place. We seem to have devolved into a strident circular firing squad of trolls, cultists and fanboys. Some of the posts are disingenuous, some are willfully ignorant and some out and out lies worthy of the White House. And, as I read some of the incredibly negative right-wing propaganda that is sometimes not just posted but enthusiastically defended when confronted with the facts, I have to ask why I am doing this to myself; why am I sitting here again reading while my stomach turns and my blood pressure spikes?

Most who bother to read this will understand that my rant is not directed at them. Most, I believe, have at least occasionally shared my dismay about the current "ambience" here. But, some---including some who I'd never heard of until recently---sow division and enmity while paying lip-service to party unity; some knowingly (IMHO) repeat rightwing memes; and, others amuse themselves by sidelining serious policy discussions by picking at nits real and invented.

So, I will continue to kibbitz now and then and post occasionally, but I need some time to heal. In the past several days, I have reread "The Prophet" and "On Bullshit" and am into Book II of Plato's "Republic": literary therapy.

Vote Blue, No Matter Who!