Yah it's kind of weird for me to see where the "Big Orange" site has gone.  Boo is just as "old" as I am in terms of visiting there and is a more eloquent writer so he can probably chronicle this better than I.

At one point it actually was small enough it WAS a community.  Those were "warm, fuzzy" days of course and I realize there's a difference between a dinner party for 6 friends and feeding 600,000 people en masse.  So yeah I know it has to have its own agenda, with a focused "message' and that invariably someone, somewhere isn't gonna like that.

So they want to focus on electing Democrats and not say figuring out the connections between FBI informants and 9/11.  Ok, that's a choice.  BUT...

But what I do NOT understand is the encouragement or at least open tolerance of so much INtolerance and the nasty, brutish way infighting is regularly permitted with some people having much more influence and power than others.  Every diary or story or topic is like throwing a piece of meat into a circle of hungry wolves and all the small dogs just go hungry.

I guess an even shorter version of what I'm trying to say is why is it always so NASTY over there?  On every topic and every subject?  Why has that been institutionalized?

That's what I don't understand.  It's like there's this undercurrent of bitterness and resentment towards those who once denigrated him and now his attitude is of triumphant judgementalism, a kind of "in your face, you were wrong and now I'm right" and so he hires/acquires others to manage the site with similar attitudes.

But isn't it always the case that those who are absolutely DRIVEN to succeed are goaded on by the ghosts of those who said they never could?  It's not such a stretch to imagine a short guy from a dirt poor country, from a family who once had prestige and standing was then transformed to another poor immigrant family in a state chock full of them having a burning drive to rise up and make a name for himself.  After all it's no secret his party conversion came only AFTER he was bitterly disillusioned with the other one.  In other words, he became a Democrat out of REVENGE against a betrayal in his eyes by the Republicans.

It would've been nice if one of the earth mothers here on BT or elsewhere would've been the leading light and prime mover for a site like DK but as I said, it always seems those with a burning sense of having to prove themselves are the only ones who can push themselves beyond their own limits, to flog a political website until it IS a force to be reckoned with alongside traditional media.  

I guess in other words it takes a fascist to get the trains running on time and a Prussian to organize an army.  A dictator really IS the most efficient form of government, the problem is I think I (and most of you here on BT and thousands elsewhere) prefer a more democratic, participatory style of doing things including the operation of political blogs.

Well that's my two cents ;)

Pax

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