My First "Diary"

On discovering that I could not post a comment on Daily Kos without being a member, four or five days ago I joined that site, mostly because I also had in mind posting some "diaries" there, including one in particular. But after I joined I then found that I could only post my first diary after a one-week waiting period.  That period should be over in another day or two, and then I will have to cross another Rubicon of sorts.

I said "another" because actually I've had quite a lot of these moments.  Even I am surprised at how many there've been, on my particular scale of things.

Quite naturally that first diary will be a shot at the biggest threat facing the U.S. today: the candidate for President named M. Romney. I've been through several titles for it. The first was "M. Romney's Mooning of America," but then I saw that DKos does not allow titles of "an inflammatory nature." So I changed it to "The Mooning of America." That was okay for a while, but another came to mind that I like even more, and I think I've decided to go with it.  It is "Money's Mooning of America." In progressive circles Romney's name is often spelled "Rmoney," for obvious reasons.  That shouldn't set too many big britches on fire, at least at first.  A little later it will be too late.

Other DKos diarists though not a lot have already covered the same ground as mine, but I figure you can't have too many on that theme, and also I take a slightly different and somewhat more detailed approach.   The theme is that Obama, not Romney, was the "winner" pf their debate last week -- if any debates can be said to have true winners, which I question, seeing that as a matter of a test of faith more than anything else.

I don't know how I'm going to fare with this diary business, because of the comments thing.   I've noticed that Dkos diaries, even those by newcomers, attract a lot of them, a huge lot, again on my scale of things.  Twenty or thirty are not unusual, and mine might draw that many or even more, seeing as how the stand I take is not a popular one and so could be a good target for quick, cheap shots.

Even Obama himself has bowed to the popular perception a little, by saying that he might have tried too hard to be "nice."   That could be seen as having punctured my case ahead of time, a little, but again I don't see things that way.   It wasn't Obama's behavior in the debate that concerned me.  From where I stand, it was Romney's conduct that made him the loser, by far.

I don't know how I would handle a situation that got anywhere near that many comments, because I've been spoiled by so many years of comfortably writing this one, which hardly anyone knows even exists. I have made a virtue of total obscurity, not only in this weblog but also in the way that I have led my entire life, and it's not easy to release one's grip on that kind of complete freedom. 

 

The biggest question, though, is not how many comments my diary will get.  It is instead what will I do if more than one comes my way.  My extreme distaste for confrontations of all kinds always causes me, in my own commenting, to post one and then go on off, usually without returning to see whether or not it got any reaction.   Though the other day I definitely did try to return to one place, with verbal mayhem in my heart.  But try as I might I didn't have a clear memory as to where I had put it, and I never did find the spot.   So the pompous dummy who set himself up so badly by stating baldly that Richard Nixon did more for civil rights than any other politician he could think of has been left to wend his merry way through his ignorance without being challenged, at least by me.

That experience very well could have built up my resolve to go ahead with this diary.

I have noticed that some diarists at DKos don't take part in the comments either, but others stay there and defend their views point by point. I can't see how either approach is that much superior to the other one, and so I tell myself that it won't matter.