yes, Waldengirl, it seems to be an ongoing struggle throughout our society, with all the problems that exist 'out there' present here as well.

I've been reminding myself lately that people are only true to their own natures, and some of them are not truly noble. Some are quite mean and unconscious and probly will remain so. C'est la vie!

If we don't expect the best manners from everyone, it can be much more delightful and encouraging to be pleasantly surprised when we do encounter decency and humanity in others! And that also enables us to avoid too much disappointment which can sap us of our enthusiasm for the great tasks at hand!

I'm of the opinion that people who show blatant disrespect to others without cause are themselves deeply troubled and unable to help themselves or refrain from lashing out so destructively. But this is what they are doing to themselves already. And they are in agony which they cannot even face or acknowledge themselves. They've thrown away their humanity and are at a great loss. At the same time, they are inordinately clueless about their own condition or what actually moves or influences them to begin with. They also are easy to manipulate because they are so unaware. See how easily their buttons are pushed (if you were interested in doing so).

I hope you don't give up. I know it's rough. Don't waste too much attention on those losers!

Do we have to emulate the politics of the Republican goons that came in with the Revolution of 1994 and their media minions like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly? Or the politics of Karl Rove?

That is what is so baffling about democrats still supporting Hillary.

Hillary and Bill O'Reilly
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N64fDLplBfQ
Hillary and Karl Rove
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTTDknAhjqw
Hillary Campaign and Fox News
http://bravenewfilms.org/blog/36988-want-to-know-what-happens-when-we-sing-fox-s-praises

If I may presume to offer some advice from my limited perspective:

What ANY of us say in here speaks for itself. Like you, I make no claims to be a "blogger". (I barely knew what a blogger was, 6 mos. ago). I'm just one ordinary person who thinks he has something to say every once in a while.

Not to be entirely pretentious, but to the extent I think of myself as anything in this context, it's more in the nature of an artist or a craftsman: The work stands alone.

As the "builder", my ONLY obligation is to be sure I create with integrity, skill, and high purpose. I have no obligation to defend it, or to argue about it. I may occasionally respond to a post or to a comment if I choose, but I accept no obligations to do so. Basically, all that I INTENDED to say is already said in my original submission. Others are perfectly entitled to make of it what they will, and say whatever they please about it.

To get this back away from ME, and onto YOU (where it belongs):

You obviously think clearly and express yourself very well. Your "work" is honest and good. You make a valid and absolutely unique contribution - possibly in ways you'll never directly realize. Keep doing that, either in here or wherever else you find the opportunity to do so. Worry about what YOU honestly think, and about saying it plainly. Let the chips fall, as to what others make of it. You have to be careful not to overly PERSONALIZE all this, if you want to continue to make the one contribution only YOU can make.

I sincerely hope this is helpful.

Thanks for a good post, waldengirl. I have had many of the same questions. I don't have a lot of answers.

Waldengirl - I've been around TPM for a while (2-3 years I suspect), so I can make some comparisons. There have always been rude and nasty posters around, only they used to be Republicans. Most of the folks have been civil and intelligent.

What you see on TPM is to some extent a reflection of the wider society at large. Many Obama supporters are now sick to their stomachs of Hillary, and the reverse is also true. This is going to get worse until the primary is over, and if Hillary refuses to accept defeat (not unlikely IMO), it's going to get even worse, and it's going to go on for a long time.

As long as the topic du jour is the latest gaffe, do not expect an improvement. The assassingate is a perfect example - Obama's supporters are outraged at Hillary and Hillary's supporters are blaming Obama for everything that befalls their girl. The chance that one side is going to convince the other with either rational arguments or shouting is zero.

It may turn out that the tent is too big and some of its occupants would, when all is said and done, rather not have anything in common with some of the others. That, I think, is a natural consequence of a two-party system - there just aren't very many choices.

A few recommendations. If you're being ridiculed, either ridicule them back or ignore them. Having the posts moderated might help, but if I had to choose between a heavily moderated and on unmoderated forum, I'd go for the latter. I've seen how badly moderation tends to work. Start your own blog posts (obviously you know that) because TPM is a product of all its posters, and that includes you. Post the way you like it and the way you think it should be. Pay more attention to the posters you like than those you don't. Never take things personally.

...I would ask, in what way is your freedom to express your opinion limited by doing so in a respectful manner? And how many voices are not being heard at all because of the unwelcoming environment?

Many seem to think that the normal rules of dignified human interaction don't apply in the anonymous environment of the blogsphere. They read, react, and vomit their reaction into the world for all to see, and it ain't pretty.

Anyhow, I appreciate your efforts here. Well done.

Waldengirl, thank you for your insightful comments and your clear commitment to civil discourse. I hope it's not too late to add a word. I promise to try to stay civil.

My impression is that most people on TPM share your commitment but sometimes, in moments of shock, suffer lapses into tirades we later regret. Certainly I am guilty of this and I regret it very much. The most common triggers for me are actions by a candidate that strike me as calculated to gain personal advantage even at the price of putting Democratic victory in jeopardy. In some of us, I think our reaction to that sort of thing takes on additional force because we are still genuinely astonished that the candidate in question is willing to act in such a way. As this implies, the behavior contradicts what we thought we understood about the candidate's character. With so much at stake in this election after eight years of Bush and Cheney, the possibility that anybody would act this way is baffling, frustrating and infuriating all at once. Being told that such actions are "politics as usual" fails to mollify: we have voted against candidates who practice such politics at every opportunity our whole lives. If anything, the "politics as usual" defense only intensifies our reaction. This explanation doesn't justify rhetoric so extreme that it drives wedges deeper. It merely explains the genesis, which is as emotional as it is logical.

There is also a prismatic effect at work. Some of us look from one angle and see our candidate bending over backward to try to avoid giving offense to the other candidate and that candidate's supporters. We are therefore increasingly frustrated by continuing attacks from what we think is a very aggressive opponent with what strikes us as little regard for the truth.

Others, looking from a different angle, genuinely seem to believe the candidate we think aggressive is a victim, has been treated unfairly by our candidate in ways we can't perceive, and that something terrible has transpired that requires, in essence, throwing out the results to date. Unless we hand the nomination to a candidate who is trailing in every metric except some that strike us as highly contrived and misleading, we will be doing a grave injustice. We don't see it that way but we should understand by now that some people do.

I don't think that anyone on any side doubts Senator Clinton has been treated unfairly at times by mass media and criticized harshly by some of Obama's supporters, myself included. The disconnect seems to be about the extent to which Obama is personally responsible for the behavior of biased media and supporters gone off the reservation. This is particularly the case because Obama seems always to try throwing water on the fires arising from Clinton misstatements, most recently the assassination comment. When there were boos at the Grand Rapids rally when Sen. Edwards began praising Sen. Clinton, Obama gestured for those boos to stop. There are many, many such instances in the past several months.

My main point here is that while there are rhetorical excesses in the media and among the supporters of both leading candidates, one person who heeded your plea for civility before you even made it is Obama himself. This contrasts with statements from Bill Clinton about "saddling up" and Hillary's statements about divisive tactics being "the fun part." From one side, on the level of the candidates themselves, comes the statement, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." From the other comes a desire to clean up the kitchen - to pronounce an end to "the silly season" in American politics.

The imbalance in the attitudes of the candidates themselves as to what constitutes civil campaign behavior has an interesting by-product that I think accounts for some of the passion among Obama's followers. When you see someone you admire keep turning the other cheek only to get slapped again and again, you get madder and madder. You can keep your anger at a slow burn much of the time, but then comes what seems a particularly egregious moment and, before you know it, you've fired off an intemperate blog posting.

There is another dimension to this. Some blog postings attempt to marshal facts with the intention of helping cooler heads prevail by enabling one side to understand the other. For example, there have been many postings that try to explain that Hillary's campaign strategists made huge errors early on, transforming her from a certain winner to a trailing candidate facing a nearly impossible climb, given the established and accepted rules for the Democratic nomination process, such as proportional delegate allocation that requires huge blowout wins to gain a meaningful edge in delegates. That system works against the trailing candidate. It's fair to say that many supporters of both candidates now have a better understanding of these rules and would like to see changes for future campaigns. However, the rules have been in place for years, and certainly since the outset of this campaign. The rules are not the illegitimate result of some dastardly act by any of Hillary's opponents. If not for blunders by Hillary's campaign in allocating resources to different states, the rules would have locked up the nomination for Hillary on Super Tuesday. We all know these facts. My point at this moment is that simply describing these facts is sometimes considered incendiary.

Finally, though it is factually correct, it can also seem incendiary when many Obama supporters point out that they started the campaign predisposed to support Hillary and shifted to the Obama camp precisely because Hillary went so harshly negative after she fell behind. We would have had the same reaction if any other candidate had emerged in second place and immediately adopted equally negative tactics. We would have dumped Edwards, Richardson, Biden or any other Democrat who, as we see it, was willing to risk the general election to tarnish the leading primary candidate unfairly and seize the nomination to slake personal ambition. There are too many stories on TPM to count about how people became Obama supporters, and in some cases Hillary haters, because of how Hillary chose to conduct her campaign once she fell behind. We think describing the experiences that drove us from pro-Hillary or neutral to supporting Obama, based on Hillary's behavior, should make our position more comprehensible to Hillary's supporters. Alas, even the most straightforward description of such a pilgrimmage is sometimes perceived as an attack, and can send Hillary's most outspoken supporters into attack mode.

WSomehow, hard as it seems at this stage, we're going to have to accept that we've witnessed one of the greatest political campaigns in American history, with all the same facts available to both sets of supporters, and yet, somehow, many of us seem to have lived through equally vivid but almost totally different experiences. It's a reminder that facts are well and good, but history is mostly in our minds - that is, until what's in our minds comes around again and changes history by deciding how we vote.

If we let the passions of this primary campaign bring about the election of John McCain, future generations will wonder at our derangement. Somewhere in our calculations about civility, we should factor in civility toward our children and grand children. What we do will affect them, likely in a huge way. However heartfelt our grand snits, however morbidly satisfying the sensation of giving way to them, we should not let them scar lives for decades to come.

Your message is a call to save us from that fate, Waldengirl. Maybe the discussion you initiated will be a step toward salvation, at least in this particular internet pond.