Forgive this moment of diary-pique, but I'm frustrated. I've been banging heads with some folks who seems to think that, if we use our outrage about the torture vote to strengthen our resolve to take back the Congress in November, we're being centrist, "cozy with the Republicans," or proud of our government's policy on torture.
So with your forgiveness, I'd like to use this diary to express my frustration in its fullness.
Clicky.
Some Kossacks have lamented this vote as the death of America. Some have used this vote as the catalyst to propel themselves out of the Democratic Party.
This is pure foolishness.
Yes, the passage of this bill hurts. It hurts our morality, it hurts our patriotism, and it hurts our faith in our party. When eleven Democratic Senators vote for torture and the suspension of habeas corpus, it hurts. But where will we find resolution, much less absolution, if not in the best parts of the Democratic Party?
Yes, it is another cut in a death by a thousand cuts. But it is not the killing blow.
There are other Kossacks who do not have a direct role in the American political process. They are expatriates, foreign nationals, and sometimes, they are trolls with nothing better to do. Many times, they come to Daily Kos and try to shame us with the failures of our government. They rub those sins in our faces. They accuse us of supporting the Republican agenda, and literally of endorsing torture, by the sole virtue of being part of this democratic society. If we do not choose to remove ourselves from electoral politics, and remove ourselves from the effort to make America better from the inside out, then we are torturers. We are sadists. We are proud of our country's mistakes and misdeeds.
Wrong. We are proud of our country.
We are not proud of our President. We are not proud of the vast majority of Republicans. We are not proud of the actions of those Democrats who cannot stand for that which must be defended. We are not proud of torture, lawlessness, war, willful ignorance and hubris.
We are proud of what our country tells us it can be. And we fight to make it thus.
If you cannot see this in our passion, and if you cannot read this in our words, then you are nothing more than a simulacrum. You spout the divisiveness and hate that the Republicans have planted into our democracy, without revealing any cause or motivation for those emotions other than their mere existence.
If you cannot understand what Daily Kos is all about (and it is perfectly clear to those who care to look), then you have no right to assign morals or motivations to us. When you come here just to make trouble, display low-quality "performance art," observe what you think is a "human experiment," or voice hollow concern for the liberal/progressive/true Democratic cause, you should expect to be opposed.
You will be fought, tooth and nail, because that is what we are here to do.
We are here to fight.