The Kos Kids aren't alright

My peeps all agree that Daily Kos used to be one of the best news sites around. Its founder Markos Moulitsas used to post a lot of content there. But in the past few months, Daily Kos has been just a jumble of stuff.

A vast majority of the content there today is not from Kos himself. I'm not even sure who's really running the site now. Daily Kos is no longer even recognizable as a progressive site. The first sign of trouble that I can recall was the invasion by "Meow Mix Mike" Bloomberg supporters.

Bloomberg's Trump-like cult kept shouting down everyone else, improperly flagging posts, and generally making nuisances of themselves. They actually used the argument that Bloomberg should be nominated precisely because he's a billionaire.

When Bloomberg's campaign faltered, they moved on to spreading Red-baiting propaganda against Bernie Sanders and making classist comments about his supporters.

Then - when the conservavirus pandemic grew - they in essence began supporting Trump's unconstitutional martial law proposal. But they only supported it when a Democrat or a Republican other than Trump supported it. Democrats who supported it were lauded as presidential material. Democrats who did not support it were bashed.

They supported Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine's unconstitutional martial law order that state officials used to try to restrict abortion rights. They supported Trump appointee Steven Mnuchin's proposal for a 3-month period of nationwide martial law. This was even after new cases of the pandemic soared in Italy under its martial law regime.

When someone rightly expressed opposition to "stay at home" orders but supported people who didn't want wealthy owners of second homes coming into their town to evade their own state's order, the new generation of Kos Kids suddenly started singing a new tune to suit the purpose at hand. After supporting these orders, they said owners of second homes shouldn't have to obey them, because they have to pay taxes all year on these homes. Yeah, it must be rough to be rich.

They repeatedly clogged Daily Kos by posting a link to a website backed by wealthy donors that used discredited data to endorse a months-long reign of national martial law.

All of that occurred after lockdowns were proven to be ineffective - and after most experts agreed that the lockdowns were unethical under any standard.

All of the above stances - supporting a billionaire candidate just because of his money, Red-baiting, classism, unconstitutional trampling of civil liberties (except for the rich), limiting abortion rights - filled a supposedly progressive website. Of course, there's still some dissenting voices. But some of the key elements of progressivism are maximizing civil liberties and minimizing influence of money. Trumpian martial law shouldn't even be seriously entertained on any website - let alone on Daily Kos. In addition, the martial law now being imposed in America has already led to at least one racially motivated hate crime.

Almost completely missing from the debate is the fact that many of the orders issued by government officials in the U.S. lately are not only ineffective but are also unconstitutional limits of freedom of assembly. What's the point of the Constitution even listing our rights if they can just be violated arbitrarily?

With the Bloomberg bots and Republican apologists bombarding Daily Kos lately, it's their way or the highway.

The past month or two hasn't just dragged the name of Daily Kos and the media through mud. It's also reflected poorly on most of Western civilization. A lot of people seem to think Western countries are freer and more democratic than other countries. But with the recent rise of right-wing demagogues in the West, the West has had by far the most instances of martial law during this pandemic. This completely torpedoes the myth of Western exceptionalism.

The leadership of not just one country but most of the Western world has now been shown to be incompetent, authoritarian, unethical, and anti-science. These include many of the same conditions that the pirates of the 18th century rebelled against. When people become pirates again, these countries' governments won't be able to do shit about it. I'd love to see them try.