By Tristan Kasinger

As quite literally anyone who is anyone in the progressive twitter-verse knows, #UniteBlue is kind of a big deal. Whether you are a champion for #UniteBlue or one of the quickly shrinking “Blue Birthers” who question the motives of UB’s diabolical actions, everyone on the Left (and quite a few trolls on the Right) are talking about this movement.

As with everything I say here and on my my twitter , this is my opinion on what I honestly think is one of the stupidest and most childish conversations between liberals that I have ever witnessed.

A bit of background for my two readers who don’t know anything about #UniteBlue : It is both a “Hashtag” (a kind of Twitter chat room) and a support website/Twitter app . It was created by the Father-Son team of Adam and Zach Green, respectively, as a vehicle for those of us on the left to connect with each other and chat, debate and just plain chill with people who are like-minded. To any well-adjusted adult, this sounds like a good thing, right?

Apparently, no.

Enter Politicol News . This deceptively named website is a personal blog of an unknown number of anonymous writers who claim to care about the progressive cause. Glancing at their homepage, they look like one of the many independent progressive news sources out there, but if you dig deep in there you will run across plenty of incredibly one-sided attack articles aimed directly at Adam and Zach. If you read those links, which I really don’t expect you to do (honestly I had a hard time wading through them myself), you’ll notice something strangely missing: any info from Adam or Zach themselves.

hour and a half long where Zach gets grilled about every thing you could ever want to know about his past activism. The thing that is especially mind boggling is that if you simply Google “ Zach+Green+Interview+Unite+Blue ,” you’ll find quite a few articles from real lefty news sites that have contacted the Greens themselves, regardless of the final judgment of the article writers, and gotten their side of the story. What is more, the sixth result on that page is a large Q&A put up by Zach himself all about the “controversy,” answering all the questions that Politicol never actually asked him. There is also a Google+ Hangout that is anwhere Zach gets grilled about every thing you could ever want to know about his past activism.

The final nail in the coffin for the anti-Uniteblue crowd is this: if the worst-case scenario is true and the Greens are secret agents from the GOP, they are doing the worst job possible. If the GOP wants to influence the Left in any way (and I’m sure they do), I seriously doubt that even they are stupid enough to try and divide us by first bringing us all together.

There are literally pages and pages of this All of this back and forth has gone on for almost a month now. I’ve mostly stayed out of it because lately I’ve been trying the whole “Don’t feed the trolls” tactic. I tweeted a couple of support tweets aimed at Zach, but aside from that I haven’t engaged his detractors at all. However, rather than slowly dissipating as less and less people care about what Politicol has to say, the people who are left over have turned into a small group of very angry, very aggressive “truthers” who are convinced that Zach Green is a GOP puppet. @Politicolnews and their ilk spend almost the entire day tweeting #Uniteblue members and either calling them Sheeple and drug-addicts or sending them links to various articles (all on Politicolnews, of course) about all the evils of #UniteBlue. They insult the people they talk to and block their targets if any facts are brought to play. You can see a few of the tweets to the left, or if you are feeling particularly daring or masochistic, you can go to their Twitter Account and read their hate in real time. You can also catch them in action claiming Zach sent Peacock Panache, a progressive website that I contribute to, after their “news” site for just “asking them questions.”

why are you fighting with those of us in #UniteBlue with religious fervor? I don’t understand why you can’t say “You know what, I don’t agree with the founders of move on with your life. There are so many things we should all be focusing on (Hello, So all of this said, I have a question for anyone who is anti-Uniteblue: if what you are so worried about is the GOP breaking the Left up and causing us to fight amongst ourselves,? I don’t understand why you can’t say “You know what, I don’t agree with the founders of #UniteBlue and I don’t want to be a part of it. Have a good day,” and then. There are so many things we should all be focusing on (Hello, Monsanto Protection Act ) rather than arguing with a bunch of angry children who refuse to see any facts except the ones that support their arguments. If I wanted to have that argument, I’d go talk to a Tea-Partier .If you have any comments or thoughts, you can leave them below! You can also follow me on Twitter @JesusWasALefty and hear all my silliness in real time.

About Tristan Kasinger: As a progressive Christian in America, Tristan became frustrated at how the christian political perspective had been completely monopolized by the Religious Right. He triesto be a counterweight to the Right’s argument that liberalism and Christianity are not compatible, specifically on the subjects of LGBT rights, women’s rights, gun rights and rights of the poor and disabled.You can view Tristan’s website at http://jesuswasalefty.blogspot.com/ and follow him on twitter @JesusWasALefty [Originally published at Jesus was a Liberal on April 9, 2013]

Peacock Panache readers:

Peacock Panache is a news analysis blog focused primarily on civil rights, LGBTQ activism, church/state & atheism issues, women’s rights, and politics.

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