Raising the Level? There are times I have to wonder if it is all worth it. Is the time I spend here just wasted effort? This is one of those times. Now I know that Daily Kos is not designed and built to fulfill my needs. And I know that there are people for whom this is nothing more than someplace they can bitch and moan, merely "a board" or an "opinion forum". It is more than that to me. I view Daily Kos as a community. But what kind of community do I see? Increasingly I am afraid that what I see is a community built on disrespect for the views of others. At first, the thing that attracted us to this place was disrespect for the views of the "other side," of the administration and their minions and supporters, of their self-serving (lack of?) principles and convoluted logic. But I guess that hasn't been enough for some of us. We have turned the disrespect upon ourselves, attacking each other in the name of raising the purity level here. At the rate which this is progressing and the rate at which the invecting is soaring, I fear that the Daily Kos is in decline, rapidly deteriorating towards irrelevancy. The personal invective hurled by one person towards another because the first disagrees with the second, or as is more commonly the case, because the second doesn't agree with the first, is staggering. The disrespect for people's belief systems is causing, at least in me, cognitive dissonance that I'm not sure I wish to battle at this stage of my life. Aside: Q: What stage is that, Robyn? A: At the Tuesday meeting of the Bloomfield College Gay/Nongay Alliance, my partner Debbie and I volunteered to have our civil union ceremony be a public event, in keeping with our consistent striving for the educational, as part of the college's Out and Proud Week. It should be a time of joy. Hanging around Daily Kos is not currently assisting in the formation of that emotion. We see person A scream about the "single issue" member B, when what A is really screaming about is the fact that B's single issue is not A's single issue, or that B has a different take on the issue than does A. We cannot all be right at the same time and too many members are demanding that those with whom they disagree stop participating. Pardon me if I think that is not right. In speaking up in defense of those who are being threatened, I and others have been attacked ourselves. We must be right-wing freakazoids of some sort. If we try to assure people of our standing on the left, we have been abused and demeaned. The other day I enumerated the reasons and evidence that I was indeed from the far far left...and was told I was being an elitist for mentioning it...by someone whose proof that he was a leftist is that he has supported some unnamed candidate or other. The level is indeed low. There is a drought of respect and trust. There is a lack of critical thinking, even here. Asking people to think about what they are writing is seen as an attack. Pointing out an error in logic, hoping to raise the bar the tiniest bit, is called ad hominem. Insisting that words not be distorted solely as means of attack is seen as classist. The educated amongst us are often told we should behave as if we are not educated. Anti-intellectualism is rampant. Hunter is leaving? Everyone is blaming Jerome, of course, but they are missing Hunter's point: I am tired of months of fights in which every diarist tries to out-top the purity of the last, and where every fight is dominated by clownish, overpainted rhetoric that cannot distinguish between the most vile of neocons and some guy three diaries up or down that might have a procedural objection, strategic disagreement or, terror of terrors, different phrasing of the points of an issue. To blame Jerome or pacifists is to misread Hunter's message. The attack on pacifists here has pushed me to my limits. I would be sad, but perhaps it is time for me to go as well. I will be examining that over the next couple of weeks, if only because I would like to say goodbye to Bill in Portland Maine before I go. I'd also like to find someone who would keep Teacher's Lounge going, if at all possible. We all like to see our children have a chance to grow and prosper. No one wants to see their "child" die. But I would really like someone to give me a meaningful reason to stay. I expect instead that I will be provided with many more reasons to go. --Robyn Elaine Serven

--Bloomfield College, NJ