And anyone else on here that cares to chime in.

I cross-posted this diary on Daily Kos this morning.
http://www.dailykos….

It was immediately labeled as a troll post.

Why?

It wasn’t a flame. It was up front about what I believed. Its wasn’t even that snarky (at least for me).

It was pretty plain vanilla.

Shit, it was even pretty accurate. I don’t think anyone on here thinks Pelosi is going to let funding for the war get cut off and I think everyone on here is rather surprised that the Pelosi jet story, which is a stupid story, still has legs.

Are these sites, GMD, Kos, Red State so self enclosed that they turn into one big echo chamber?

What good does that do?

I guess I’m also a little pissy (looking straight at you Odum) that you pulled the link from my Blog. Of course it’s your right, its your kingdom.

But I guess I would ask why.

You know who I am. You know what my beliefs are. You know that if you put up a Welch press release, an INACCURATE press release, and then call me out in your post, well, I’m coming out with my guns blazing.

What do you expect?

Would you want folks on these sites that only talk about how criminal Dick Cheney is or only talk about how terrible John Kerry is?

I mean, I don’t know. But it seems to me that you wouldn’t.

I enjoy Kos and GMD b/c these sites challenge me and test what I believe. Just like I enjoy Red State b/c that site tests me and what I believe.

People cannot honestly believe that everything that has to do with the Republican Party is all bad and that everything that has to do with the Democratic Party is all good?

You can’t honestly take yourself so seriously that when someone disagrees with those two assumptions you go through the roof?

I’ve learned alot about blogging in the last 3 months and I really, really enjoy it. And, I’ve seen great stuff on both sides of the aisle. And, I’ve seen some really hateful ignorant stuff put out on both sides of the aisle.

So I guess I would ask, can’t we all just get along? Or is that an impossible?

(I’m asking that in a very broad sense, not just related to GMD)

It’s back. With 33 sponsors in the House and 10 in the Senate, civil rights activists are finally moving to finish the work that began with the placement of the term “civil union” into the international lexicon.

Putting aside for a moment the idea that in a truly just society, any so-called “debate” around granting full rights of citizenship to gays and lesbians shouldn’t consist of any more hand-wringing than a quick fifteen minute “Wha..? Gays can’t marry?! Oops! Geez…. what were we thinking?! Sorry about that…. here, let’s take a second and fix that right up…(pass, pass, conference, pass, sign),” there’s little doubt that the issue – if it gets any traction at all – is electoral dynamite in Vermont.

For proponents, now is clearly the best time to move forward. There are strong, established majorities in the House and Senate and nobody’s willing to bet the farm on a Douglas electoral defeat anytime soon. Clearly, if not now, when?

And among those stepping up to do the right thing is a surprise name; that of Senate Majority Leader John Campbell of Windsor, largely considered among the most conservative of the caucus, and a fairly feisty conservative as well. From the Times Argus:

As a Democrat who lives in Quechee, a portion of the state more conservative than some, he heard firsthand the animosity stirred up by that law, which provides same-sex couples many of the same legal protections as marriage.

“There was such uproar,” Campbell, the majority leader in the Senate, said Wednesday. “No one was in the middle.”But he also heard from gay and lesbian couples about what a difference the law made to them, Campbell said. While he understood the arguments against the bill, he rejects the idea that civil unions damaged the institution of marriage or morals in Vermont.

“It’s not about morality. It’s about compassion, understanding and humanity,” Campbell said.

Put aside for a moment the odd choice of words there – morality is about compassion, understanding and humanity, yes?

Still, Campbell may not simply be doing the right thing. As another Democrat frequently rumored to hold loftier political ambitions, he may be showing more political savvy than his former rival for Senate leadership.

Consider what we can gleam from the post-civil union election battle of 2000. The results of what was probably the least pleasant election cycle in anyone’s memory obviously showed a highly polarized, visceral split between those that supported equality and those who rejected it outright for gays and lesbians. It also showed an equally pronounced split among many House districts. More often than not, a district was clearly “pro” or “anti,” with more being “anti,” leading to the dramatic power shift that booted Dems from legislative control.

But broken out of those districts, the statewide numbers suggested a “pro” majority – just one that was too clumpy to keep the legislature out of GOP hands. Governor Dean became the very embodiment of the issue on the campaign trail, yet he still won re-election. Lt. Governor Racine as well.

It might well be that the savvy choice for a politico with statewide ambitions would be to… well, to do the right thing, here – especially if you’re a politico who could stand to improve his overly-conservative image among more liberal primary voters, as Campbell would be advised to do. It also would give him bragging rights on proudly doing the right thing in the face of public scorn, when in fact the greater public is probably with him.

Throw into the mix that this is seven years later, and as such the intensive polarity of this debate is bound to be less pronounced than the last one, if for no other reason than the two main arguments of the anti-civil union crowd – that Vermont society would collapse, and that “civil unions” are actually gay marriage being snuck in and foisted on Vermonters – are dead and buried. Obviously, society hasn’t collapsed, and if civil unions really are same sex marriage, then what possible difference would actual same sex marriage make.

Still, without question, the issue has the unique potential to create a mirrored Montpelier next session – a Democratic Governor and Lt. Governor facing off against at least one Republican house of Congress.

Shumlin, on the other hand, by saying that he is “…not planning on wasting a lot of energy on efforts that will not become law… If the governor indicated he would sign the bill, I would take a more serious look at it” is putting himself in seriously dangerous waters, precisely because that statement in and of itself is absurd in its (seeming) arbitrariness. Does Shumlin really mean to casually provide Douglas with such an all encompassing rhetorical veto? Of course not. There will be climate change bills that will emerge from this Senate, despite Douglas inevitably indicating his unwillingness to sign them. In fact there may well be some deliberately intended to draw such a veto in order to draw a bright line of distinction between Douglas and his next Democratic opponent.

Shumlin also needs to be careful because this issue isn’t going to get swept under the rug in the same way impeachment was last session. It’s a hot-button, simple-to-discuss issue with strong, sustained interest from the press and among many across the broad Democratic base. He may bottle it up in the Senate, but in the House there will be a strong push from proponents that will take on a personal enough quality among Legislative coworkers that it may well overcome Speaker Symington’s near-absolute reticence to take on any overly controversial, potentially majority-threatening issues. If that happens, Shumlin could end up looking like a road block to equality, feebly trying to point the finger of blame at the Governor – when if there’s any legislative body that could likely hold a veto-proof majority, it’s the Senate rather than the House.

I think about my kids a lot. Give me half a chance and I’ll drive you crazy talking about them (or, just as often, how they’re driving me crazy). It’s a cliche, but it’s true – once you’re a parent, your life is forever divided into two completely different pieces; before you had kids, and after. Other life-benchmarks, even the ones you used to think were important back in the pre-parental past, become merely details.

This is of course why all the trite political messaging cliches – making everything about “the children” – keep working, even though they are so transparenyly shallow and exploitative. Sentiments about kids – even clumsy sentiments – always hit parents right where they live (so to speak). Likewise, social action is almost always couched in the context of children. The whole notion of the future is placed within that context. The preamble of the Vermont Democratic Platform states “Everything we do – every policy, law, and regulation – must consider the effects of our actions on the lives and futures of the world’s children, and their children.”

It is an implicit, defining distinction between young progressive activists and their older counterparts; we older ones are doing it for the children.

But does such a motivation distinguish our politics?

It’s another cliche that lefties are all more idealistic – even radical – in our youth, but as we grow older and become more “seasoned,” our politics moderate. While not a rule (I haven’t experienced it, although my approach has changed), it certainly seems to be the norm. The shorthand, equally cliched reasoning is that, post-college, lefties “sell-out”; that is, they get cushy jobs, collect material things and become too materialistically invested in “the system” to allow themselves to meaningfully work against its injustices. As such, they begin a process of rationalization (the at-large rationale being “maturation”) as they move from the fringes to the political center. Back at the Institute for Social Ecology, I remember Murray Bookchin opining that the way to give campus radicalism a shot in the arm would be to abolish tenure. Suddenly, all those one-time radical lefty professors wouldn’t be so comfortably invested in the university system and they’d all take to the streets again (I was never sure exactly how serious he was, but I digress…). While there are certainly more pronounced examples all around us of this phenomenon, I don’t think it explains the vast majority of aging, moderating lefties who did not go on to become wealthy. What’s moderating them? Is it really that maturity equals moderation?

I don’t think so. In fact, I blame it all on the children.

There’s a primal urge to protect your children. It’s instinctive, powerful, and tends to override everything else. Filter that impulse theough the lens of modern humanity and it has political and social overtones – especially if you’re someone who looks at the world as a dangerously unsustainable place. It becomes an instinct to hoarde – to amass enough stuff and wealth that your children will be cared for when you’re gone. And it’s political overtones are obvious; taxing of any accumulated capital (or the passing on of that capital) cuts into the self-built safety net, so its easy to start down a path of conservative political thought.

And, as unsteady and uncertain as the future seems, it can become impossible to allow too much of a safety net. In fact, you could say that the more you see “the system” as a screwed up place, the more motivated you could become to protect your kids from it. Once someone heads down that slippery slope, they also have that human need to think of themselves as a moral person, so rather than live in opposition to one’s ethics and politics, one naturally starts a process of adapting those ethics and politics – moderating, in other words. This is where DLC contributors are made, more often than not. Socially liberal, economically conservative.

Of course the irony is, that if we had a more just system where basic rights (such as health care) were protected, and an appropriate social safety net were maintained, this force of moderating-anxiety might be lessened – that selfsame moderating-anxiety that becomes a force against making improvements. It’s also more complicated a force for hardcore lefties to engage with. Much easier to call someone a “sell-out” than to acknowledge that their motivation might not be so craven and hypocritical.

For the children, despite the children – whatever the case, “the children” do make the world more complicated…