When I first came to Dailykos about a year and a half ago I was searching. I was looking for a home for my personal ideology. I had considered myself a moderate, not a liberal and certainly not a conservative. So at first I looked around for a blog site that was focused on what I believed at the time was moderate ideology.
Daily Kos Has Better Technology
What few I found for the most part left me...well, underwhelmed for several reasons. First because of the technology platforms most of them used. The kind of dynamic and interactive environment we have here on Dkos is much more highly evolved and enticing than anything else I had come across in the so called "moderate" blogosphere.
Most of the "moderate" blogs I found seemed to have more of a top down feel than a bottom up feel. As if we were being preached to by the front pagers. The opportunity to express one's self was limited to commenting on the stories the admins deigned to post. They offered no capacity to write an in depth feature article (what we call a diary here) to the general commenting participant. I found the whole modus operandi of these moderate blogs to be stale and undemocratic.
Moderate Ideology Was Not That Different
Secondly, there was the ideology question. As I mentioned, I had considered myself a moderate. And generally I did find myself in agreement with much of the ideology espoused on the moderate blogs. They were anti-Irag war, pro civil union (as opposed to pro gay marriage) and generaly fiscally somewhat conservative without being extreme. Most supported a woman's right to choose, just as most of us do here, and most had a decided disdain for the religious right. Even their thoughts on illegal immigration were in my view reasonable.
Generally they don't believe it is wise to breakup families nor feasible to try to deport millions of aliens. They seem to be in tune with some kind of back of the line approach that offers some kind of path to legitimacy if not citizenship.
Ideologically, on the surface, I think most here would agree that these positions don't seem to be that far from what we in the progressive blogosphere subscribe to. Sure there are differences, but they tend to generally be as a matter of degree not qualitative.
Daily Kos Has Better Participation
The moderate blogs did not have anywhere near the participation level that we have here. A typical blog posting might generate 10 to 20 comments, and often times just in the single digits. I suspect the reason for that is not just the lesser traffic these blogs get. I believe it's actually part of a vicious cycle caused by the top down approach I mentioned earlier. I think this makes these blogs less attractive and thus impedes both the traffic and the participation.
Lurking and Dipping My Toes
So I looked around for a better blogging experience and found three blogs I liked. Daily Kos, MYDD, and America Blog. Both Daily Kos and MYDD required a somewhat tighter signup process which turned me off at first, so my first foray into blogging was at America blog.
I was new to the blogging concept and somewhat surprised by the tradtion of blogging under a pseudonym rather than one's actual name. But I figured I would get with the program and define a user name for myself. Having long considered myself a moderate, I knew that would be part of the name. However, I also knew that I do have a certain independence of thought that sometimes put me at odds with more moderate ideology (more on this later). So MaverickModerate was born!
After some lurking I began participating in the discussions at America blog. Like the moderate blogs, America blog did not have any facility for writing in depth articles unless you are a front pager, but I did like the freedom to participate that the lack of a login process permitted. All one had to do to comment was input a handle and have at it.
However, I found that too often the tenor of discussion there took on a rather ugly, almost militant tone, particularly whenever any subject relating to gay rights came up. Rather than enlightened discussion, arguments would quickly devolve into personal invective and name calling, the kinds of things that can quickly get one TR'd off the site here. It was a definite turn off. I just could not stay there.
I then applied for a user id at MYDD, but never got the response email. I waited weeks and tried several password resets, but just never got a response. So I eventually gave up on MYDD.
Finally I Found a Home Here
My next stop was here at DailyKos. I had been lurking here for months and I did like much of what I saw, so I applied and actually received a login here. Finally, I was in.
It took me months to really learn the ropes here but eventually I got the hang of it. I was not shy about participating in the discussions here and having gotten used to the rough and tumble at Americablog I found that sometimes my style here was over the top. I learned what TR meant the hard way. In retrospect, most of those TRs were well deserved and I harbor no resentment toward those who meted them out to me. They taught me a few lessons about blogging etiquette, or perhaps more accurately, they un-taught me the bad habits I had learned at other blogs.
My Conversion
As time went on, I found myself in agreement with the vast majority of the ideology here. My points of disagreement were far fewer than they were at the moderate blogs. This surprised me. Was this because my ideology was changing? Perhaps to a degree, but I think it's more profound than that alone. I began to realize that I did not have all the answers that I thought I had.
The diaries and comments here really forced me to think things through. And when I thought some of those things through to completion, I realized not just the accuracy of the premise of those things, but in fact in many cases, they were things I believed in all along. I had begun to discover myself, to discover who I really was, and that what I really believed in was not the moderate ideology that I thought it was, and further that it never really had been.
I had been bamboozled by the Clintons and the Peroistas and the McCains into believing that liberal was a bad word. That if people bought too deeply into liberal ideology, society would crumble into a chaotic rabble. That conservatives were still the enemies of social justice but that they had the right answers to fiscal and economic issues. Best not to question them too deeply. After all, money and finance were their forte. They usually knew best.
But my time here had taught me to see through that. Thanks to people like Bonddad and Jerome a Paris I began to see the folly of conservative fiscal thought. Thanks to Kos I began to see that the political process was more than just a race to see who could get a 51% margin. Thanks to Hunter I could see the fundamental unfairness and hypocracy of conservative thought in general. Thanks to McJoan I was introduced to some of the finest candidates the netroots had to offer. Thanks to NYCEve I saw the depth of depravity and rot that has permeated the healthcare industry.
I'm Not So Moderate After All
One of the most profound differences here from the more "moderate" points of view is exemplified by the attitudes towards constitutional integrity. While the moderates tended to be generally, if weakly in line with many ideas here, they seemed to have little or no concern about the dammage being done to our constitution by the Bush administration and neoconservative ideology.
They didn't seem to understand for example that FISA immunity is a fundamental corruption of everything we hold dear as Americans. That testifying before congress when subpoenaed is not an option, it is a requirement. They did not complain much when our justice system was being subverted by Alberto Gonzalez. Only when his hypocracy was on full public display for all to see, did they begin to undestand what Kossacks had been warning about for at least a year.
GBCW
Finally, the last straw for me came recently when a commenter mentioned that because my handle included the word "moderate" I was not welcome in his foxhole. He wanted a rabid fighting liberal with him. He couldn't be bothered to actually read the comments that clearly showed my heart was indeed just as much with the progressive cause as was his. I began to question why I retained that handle at all. It does not speak for who I really am. This became clear to me recently at an Obama event I attended. We were discussing possible VP picks and Jim Webb came up. I immediately pointed out that Jim Webb had voted for FISA Immunity and had repeatedly voted for continued Iraq war funding. To me that disqualified him.
The gentleman who had proposed Webb looked at me and said, "man you are no moderate". He was right. I'm not a moderate at all now, if indeed I ever was.
So I am bidding adieu not to Dailykos but to MaverickModerate. That name just does not describe who I am or what I believe. I am a proud and solid progressive. I can not be known by that handle any longer.
I am not leaving Dailykos altogether, I have established a new identity for myself as Phil In Denver and from now on, it is under that name that I will post.