General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: civil war on DU [View all]Denzil_DC
(7,244 posts)It's taken very little recently to be subject to ad hominems, and it's going to be hard to find agreement on which "side" started it, or which has featured the worst offenders, if that matters.
From personal experience, just the other day I piped up on a ProSense thread to express my disapproval of the shameless swarming on her posts. The instant reaction from a couple of Snowden defenders was to dismiss me as a suspicious "dormant account," then castigate me for daring to express an opinion since I don't have a large post count and generally try to avoid piling in on the mudslinging.
You can't click into many threads without seeing sniggering allegations that such and such a poster is being paid, either expressed in code or in plain view. That doesn't help matters, not least in having any arguments those posters may put forward or their motivations taken seriously thereafter.
Then there's the allegations of an "Obama personality cult" and the throwing around of the term "Obamabot" on a supposedly Democratic board from people who cannot seem to see that they have their own personality cult going with Glenn Greenwald, who can do no wrong and must be beyond any suspicion - a standard he never applies to the subjects he writes about.
Then there's the insistence (which is apparent in your OP) that everything in the world is totally black and white, and that it's unacceptable to feel that we do not know the whole story about most things we learn of second or third hand, but only what's filtered through imperfect sources and media that have their own agendas.
Then there's the endless stream of meta threads, complaining that all people want to do is talk about Glenn Greenwald or Snowden rather than "the issues," which I probably don't need to point out piles irony on irony.
So yes, there are divisions, you're right, and they aren't likely to benefit anyone in the long run except the Republicans. And we've seen this play out time after time on different issues over the last few years, the difference at the moment being that we're at a point in the second electoral cycle of Obama's term when the deadlock in Congress has reached near total paralysis, so there's a vacuum of political activity that some seem to feel the need to fill with infighting rather than looking forward.
It's almost as if the Republicans planned it that way.