TBT: The Brutal Truth

Bailing On dKos

It's official -- as soon as this post is finished, I will have absolutely nothing to do with anything involving Markos Moulitsas on it and DailyKos will be wiped from my Truth Disciples. Four days ago, Kos royally fucked up as Pam Spaulding and Pandagon catch Kos bailing on the effectiveness progressive women have been having on the Blogosphere by essentually waxing elitist meritocratic nonsense. Then just hours ago, I catch this from Kos regarding a casting call for the commericial of the book he co-authored with Jerome:

We need people for the commercial, people who look like the Democratic Party -- workers in hard hats, moms with kids, men and women in business suits, hippies, young and old, all colors, enviro types, college professors, young women, someone in a wheelchair, etc.

When I read this, I didn't take note of what Kos includes in his "look" of the Democratic Party. Instead, I took notice at what he conveniently leaves out of the picture. Let's break this fucker down -- Kos wants "workers in hard hats" as opposed to workers in softhats such as burger flippers at McDonalds or nurses wiping asses in hospitals and group homes. Therefore, the working poor need not apply? Oh, but Kos suddenly (and oh so disengenously) wants women but there's a qualifier: "moms with kids". Yeah, as opposed to "fathers with kids" because apparently Kos doesn't think they exist and probably marches in perfect goose-step to the status-quo notion that single fathers with kids are defacto deadbeats -- a myth that has been shattered in 1998 by Dr. Sanford Braver who conducted the longest and most expensive ($10 Million large over the course of 8 years) federal study on the subject.

He doesn't want them and apparently there isn't a single divorced/seperated Dad within the entire fucking community over there so, "deadbeat Dads" along with women without children need not apply to Kos casting call. Afterall, the only kids he cares about are his own -- your kids are either convenient props for his commercial (at best, ladies) or drains on society and his pocket book (at worst, Daddy-o!)

Whoa! Wait a second here -- maybe not. I could be getting ahead myself because Kos asks next for "men and women in business suits" so perhaps he's not so selectively anti-women as he lead on. Oh, but they've got to be in business suits as opposed to people not in business suits -- skilled union labor workers in the automotive and construction industries (to name but a few) don't business suits. You don't apply.

From there, he wants "hippies" which I don't understand because it seems obvious by now Kos doesn't really know what he wants. Maybe he only wants middle-class, surburanite, Grateful Dead "hippies" but lower-class, trailer-park, Kurt Kobain hippies can take a hike. Fast forward a bit, Kos says that he wants "young women". Good christ, now we really know for damned sure Kos doesn't know what he wants. One moment, he wants women. The next, he doesn't. Then the next the moment he wants women ... but only certain types of women. I don't know what to make of such kabuki-ness considering the majority of his front page contributors are women.

Lastly, Kos makes the coup de grace with a demagogic appeal for "someone in a wheelchair" and I'm wondering ... can that someone be a woman? Can that someone be an out-of-work, out-of-shape, injured Ohio worker trying to make due with whatever Tom Noe and the other corruptive Republican jackoffs didn't filch from the states' workman's comp kitty? In the end, it doesn't matter because the person that could deliver Kos his wheelchair bound prop had allready been disqualifed from the casting call -- the ass-wiping, drool-catching, softhat-wearing nurses!

That paragraph just pisses me off because here's a guy -- along side Jerome -- who drug their knuckles through state after state after state in the research portion of their book and yet Kos apparently remains about as blind and confused as to the true face of the Democratic party (and America as a whole) as Wolf Blitzer would be on the goddamned set Blue's Clues. You would think just ordinary people from all walks of life would be enough. But nope -- Kos is trolling for stereotypes of people, and I let him have it.

Are you fucking serious, Moulitsas?!? I read the paragraph above and immediately noticed not what was left in but instead what has been conveniently left out and therefore left out of whatever the hell you think "looks" like the Democratic party. It does nothing more than remove all doubt to what I had merely suspected all along -- you're a fraud and an opportunist like all the rest.

With that, I hereby blow not only this popsicle stand but the Democratic Party, too, by I'll give you this much parting advice -- move your commerical shoot to New Orleans. Not only will you find all the stereotypes you'll need but you won't have to sugar-coat the casting call with the base alloy of foppish platitudes and hypocracy you demonstrate in the above paragraph. That garbage is typical of politicians.

And apparently typical of Markos Moulitsas because, reading between the lines of this and what Amanda uncovered just a few days ago, I get the feeling that Kos's answer to the kinds of people he conveniently left out of his casting call, and likewise out of whatever idea he's got as to the "look" of the Democratic Party, would be a defensive and derisive:

Create a blog. If there’s an audience, great. If there isn’t, not so great.

I say that because his elitist meritocratic view on blogs and success as a blogger seems to run right along side his own elitist meritocractic political views and personal success as a whole:

Besides, he suggests, if a Salvadoran war refugee—in his words, a "political nobody"—like him can make it on the Internet, there’s nothing stopping anyone else from doing the same.

There's the rub: Kos didn't make it himself -- the people made him and they can just as quickly unmake him.

Nevertheless, the underlying message seems clear -- all you working poor burger flippers and other softhat wearing people? Don't go running to Kos with your "pet-issues" for inclusion of the Democratic Party. Start a blog instead. Neo-feminists, lesbians, and other women without children? Start a blog ... wait ... you're allready did that. Shit! You're still not getting your "pet-issues" included into Kos's "look" of the Democratic Party no matter how much ass you kick in the Blogosphere. Hey, all you folks that don't wear business suits? Start a fuckin' blog. Just don't bother Kos. Oh, for all you people not in wheelchairs? You've been voted of Kossack Island -- start a fuckin' blog. Just don't bother Kos because Kos doesn't give a damn -- he just wants to "win elections" so you're nothing more than a means to an end to him. Part with a peice of your wallet, and your vote, then please sit down, know your place in his meritocracy, and shut the fuck up.

Little does Kos himself know that he may have already lost those elections:

When the Bush administration discredits Old Testament religion and crony capitalism from the global political arena, when its moral bankruptcy reaches fruition in fiscal bankruptcy, there will be many Americans asking the "Why" questions they largely ignored during the Bush administration's assault on the people. There will be many Americans interested in knowing whom to blame for the utter failure of the modern world's first formal democracy. They must do so in order to avoid making the same mistakes again.

The first fingers pointing to blame will, of course, be directed at the obvious causes of America's fall from grace, i.e., the Old Testament conservative Republican party and the incompetence and corruption that the "born again" Bush administration has brought into American government. In discrediting religious capitalism, the Bush administration will have inadvertently accomplished what liberal capitalism could never have accomplished on its own. In the post-Bush era, there will no longer be opposition to original American values and ideals.

Under capitalism's dominion, neither liberal or conservative political factions can be seen as being particularly American. Both are inculcated with the mindless notions that have allowed capitalism's increasingly rapid rise to political dominion. In surviving capitalism's dominion, liberalism has had to accommodate so much greed-inspired nonsense, liberalism is as dead-lost as conservatism is dead-wrong.

The second fingers pointing to blame will, therefore, be directed at the enabling causes, i.e., the utter failure of a compromised liberal electorate to have any moral influence whatsoever on the direction America has been going since its takeover by corporate capitalism following World War II. Well-healed liberals remain entirely dependent on the capitalism that has made them wealthy and, at the same time, forced millions of working American parents into poverty.

Like wealthy conservatives, wealthy liberals see themselves as deserving of everything they have managed to acquire under capitalism. Their children deserve the very best educations in private schools, oftentimes spending more money per year to educate one child than millions of working parents can earn in a year ... Here is the subtle self-righteousness inculcated into well-healed people by capitalism's monied dreams and mindless demands. It is, self-evidently, not so much a problem of conservatives versus liberals. It is, as it always has been, more a problem of the "haves" versus the "have nots."

Gee, that sounds exactly what Sen. John Edwards was trying to communicate on the campaign trail. Alas, A-list bloggers such as Kos backed the wrong horse and we've been paying dearly for it ever since only to discover that Dr. Lower is indeed right -- liberalism/progressive is indeed dead lost. It has marched as far to the right as it possibly can and the way forward is to go backward -- back to basics. Back to core values and principals. Of course, with Kos's apparent elitist meritocratic and foolhardy views on politics and what "looks" like the Democratic Party marching in perfect lockstep to an elitist meritocratic foolhardy views on the blogopshere, it's no suprise the truth flew right over his head:

Well-healed liberals see conservatives as the bad guys and they see themselves as the good guys. The problem ... is that both sides are sinners in the eyes of Jefferson's God, i.e., in the eyes of the people. Both sides comprise the beautiful people who traditionally get what they want before the people get what they need.

In other words, both conservative and liberal capitalism survives at the expense of poor working people, a fact of capitalism that has stifled meaningful human progress in America for half a century. Liberal capitalism is still capitalism. It abides the ludicrous right wing notion that sharing and socialism are on the path to hell on earth. It implicitly champions the ludicrous notion that competition and capitalism's corruption are not on the path to hell on earth.

But we are on the path of hell on Earth and have been on that path for quite some time. The division in the country grows wider, stretching nerves that are allready too taught and past the tolerance level that it is a miracle in and of itself that there isn't open rioting in the streets of America today. Any failure on Kos's part to be all-inclusive as to the look of the Democratic Party will be dangerous and tragic because:

The American people are everything from grade-school dropouts and high-school dropouts to high school graduates, college graduates and university faculty, all living in the tiny worlds carved out for them by their response to and actions within greed-driven capitalism. It is called compartmentalization of the mind, and it has nothing to do with a creative and unifying endeavour.

Even creative and unifying endeavours as Crashing The Gate for there'll be no gate crashing period as long as unenlightened, self-indulgent, and dismissive attitudes among A-list bloggers such as Kos remain so to such a degree that they bleed in among the public masses in general and that's why sometimes living life in tiny worlds -- tiny fucking bubbles -- requires a damned needle every now and then. It requires a deep-seeded conviction to cast a vote for self-less reasons (e.g. the common good) instead of selfish reasons (e.g. tax-cuts and free trade agreements). Amanda and Pam were right to take their respective needles to Markos's bubble but it won't pop. Markos's bubble will only answer to Markos's own needle. If that happens, the entire blogosphere will hear it.

posted by Sizemore at 2:54 PM

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