"DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND" -- WHO NEEDS 'EM?

Trolling around the interwebs today, ostensibly taking advantage of a day off from work by looking for a new job ... There certainly are a lot of online employment resources out there these days. Holy shit. Anyhow, taking a well-deserved break from such an irritating and odious pastime, I order another beer and point my laptop towards Democratic Underground, where I stumble over a post by Skinner entitled:

In case there is any confusion: You cannot use DU to support Cindy Sheehan’s third-party candidacy.

Well, that's more than enough to grab my feeble attention. He goes on to write:

As you know, Cindy Sheehan announced that she is going to run for Congress against Nancy Pelosi as an independent candidate. This post is to remind everyone that supporting Cindy Sheehan’s independent candidacy is not permitted on this website. If Cindy had chosen to run as a Democrat in the Democratic primary then you would have been permitted to support her campaign here, but instead she chose to run as an independent.

Now, honestly, there are so many things about this declamation that chap my ass, I hardly know where to begin. Skinner goes on to quote DU "rules," including:

You are not permitted to use this message board to work for the defeat of the Democratic Party for any political office.

It's all too clear, as if it wasn't quite before, that the "Democratic" in "Democratic Underground" is a reference to the "big-D" variety. In the world of Skinner (and Kos and Move On, among others), perceived loyalty to a corrupted, thoroughly debased political wing of the corporate class (commonly referred to as the Democratic Party) trumps all other concerns, and precludes any possible discussion of what the concept "democratic" actually means. Controlling the agenda, shoe-horning the range and character of the discussion to fit into a narrow, pre-determined ideological framework, silencing dissent and any hint of criticism, telling people what they can and can't talk about, and possessing a no-matter-what allegiance to a political machine -- well, fuck me with a branding iron if that isn't the M.O. of any number of anti-democratic wingnut pressure groups out there, working diligently to beat us all into submission and stuff fascism down our throats. Imposing no-compromise ideological discipline upon an online community with "Democratic" in its title makes Skinner and his cohorts fundamentally no different than the agenda-mongers at Fox News, or Drudge, or any other freeper-freaks irresponsibly polluting the body politic.

Skinner can believe any damn thing he wants -- if he's delusional enough to believe that the astoundingly pathetic and wretchedly servile DLC Democrats at the helm of the party, the Pelosis and Hoyers and Reids and all the rest, are the unsung saviors of the American Republic, that's his problem. It's a "free" country, as they say. On the other hand, censoring others who might not quite agree with you 100% of the time means only one thing: you're nothing but a toweringly hypocritical asshole. As far as I'm concerned, that applies to Kos and all the other Frankenstein monsters of the "acceptable" democratic opposition as well. Fuck the lot of them.

By the by, I realize it's a hell of a longshot, but I sincerely hope that Cindy wipes the floor with Pelosi's useless, corporate-owned, off-the-table ass. Take that, Skinner.