...a teenager (though without the Angst). I wish I were even the average in that Blogads survey.
The netroots are rabid. See "frothing," "malicious," and "huffing and puffing" in the above articles. There will never be any way for the netroots to entirely combat this charge. Whenever you draw three million people together, it is doubtful that you can get them all to stay on message and look like reasonable people. Within any large group, it will always be easy to be offended by, and to remember, the most vocally anti-social elements of that large group. Those elements exist within any large group, and it is all too simple a form of character assassination to characterize an entire group as exhibiting the traits of a small minority within that group. It is also easy for a large group of people who feel they are on the outside looking in to get a little aggressive at times. Finally, it is really easy for a small group of people in power to view the hordes massing at their doorstep (and the servants in their house) as rabid and overly aggressive. It is important to remember that characterizing the entire three million strong progressive netroots community as all containing identical that characterizing the entire three million strong progressive netroots community as all containing identical personality traits is at best crude generalization, and at worst grotesque, chauvinistic stereotype.
Quite right, Chris.
Moreover, "frothing," "malicious" and "huffing and puffing" are foolish spins on the quite large number of us in the netroots who are irked that so many of the "adults" in the higher reaches of the Democratic Party have enabled through cowardice (and, sadly, cooperation) the Bush Administration in its efforts to dismantle the FDR legacy, 60 years of internationalism and the Constitution.
That anger, which each of us displays in her or his own way is not something to be ashamed of. On the contrary. those who aren't angry at the Administration and who continue to let it trample what we hold dear as Americans are the ones who should be ashamed. If such sentiments make me a frother, so be it.
