The Angry Tirade I Never Wrote

For several days I was mentally writing a raging kiss-off to the whole fucking liberal blogosphere, a furious rant about how we could have had the power to make a real positive impact this election but instead we squandered the opportunity, embracing sectarian acrimony over any notion of the larger good, elevating trivial differences above the things that should bring us together. Now god knows I have other good reasons to be in the shittiest of shitty moods, but this--the massive, blind, stupid failure of blogtopia--was really, really pissing me off.

And I still agree with the things I would have written. But...

Yesterday I had occasion (no, not occasion as such; vanity, I suppose, as well as simply wanting some kind of comfort) to go back and read through the things people posted after our father died. So once again I was comforted by the overwhelming kindness and support from all of you. From all the folks who left comments; from Deb, who posted her own message of condolence; from Kathy, who wrote a lovely, moving tribute; from Steve M and Melissa, who invited Kathy to cross-post it; from the commenters there.

And I thought, if all that primary ugliness is the blogosphere at its worst, this is certainly the blogosphere at its best. The people who who expressed their condolences don't always agree with me, and some of those disagreements have been substantial and (occasionally) heated; but when it really mattered, they were there. This is what makes it worthwhile. This is what makes us strong; this is what makes us a community (or, I guess, communities).

So I guess I'm not giving up on blogtopia just yet. But I would ask one favor of anyone who reads this: Whenever you get into an argument with other liberals/progressives/whatever--and it looks like this thing is going on a while longer, so that seems pretty likely--think of them as people who might well try to console you if you lost a loved one, whom you would likely console if they lost someone dear to them.