Very wise decision, Nez. There are some people who are always in the center of any controversy; that doesn't make them bad people, it only makes them people who like a good fight. But it doesn't make you a coward or a weak person if you choose to live a peaceable life--it only makes you focused a little higher.

But I am not here for them—not any individual, and certainly not your fights that exist only to keep some mad cocktail of superiority and victimhood alive, some restless itch that is older than dust, some energy that serves to disturb and sow distrust.

I have stared at this all night, trying to see it as something other than a knife in my back. Maybe I am misinterpreting your words.

I would just beg you to remember both that I apologized for ever mentioning your name, and that when you said at my place that you had picked a bad time to quit reading blogs, I said, no, a good time, because you have far more important uses for your strength right now. I stand by that.

I did not ask you to join my fight and I would never presume the right to do so.

If it helps you to understand at all, the way you described feeling after Greenwald was dismissive of your concerns is not dissimilar to the way I feel today. I have not asked anything for that other than to be left alone.

Good luck with everything.

oh, i'm sorry ilyka. that's the problem with talking into a page. every person reading it takes it as being to them personally (not to mention i linked you!) but no. that part was not to you. not at all. i understand why you are shutting down. i said i do'nt blame you.

i was speaking more toward a few nests of nonsense, esp. a recent thread where someone was being a little crazy, i think, and wanting to draw me into it. sorry. not YOUR fight. maybe i should ahve linked, but i try not to spread fires further by doing that kind of thing. the danger is, others can pick it up who should not.

i like you, ilyka. you've tried hard. and been kind. and worked to do your best, to my mind. i'm sorry that felt like a knife. i meant to the people who enjoy banging back and forth until they are bloody, who seem to need to do so. clearly, you do not. sorry again for the loose meaning, the misunderstanding.

and thank you for coming out and making sure. i would have hated to have that be unclear but not to know you felt that way.

Back in the day before there was an internet or a blogosphere (yes, children, there was such a time), back when, if you wanted to start some shit, you mostly did it in person, I put my body, soul, and psyche on the line numerous times without apology and sometimes, without a lick of thought. I thought I was choosing not to do that now because I'm older and more tired than some. Reading this (after observing the blogosphere for eighteen months or so), I realize that -- for me -- it's not fatigue, it's wisdom. Cool. :^D I so seldom get to see my progress like that. It's wisdom, hermano. It's wisdom.

straight up, 'mana. to me, there just comes a point where i step back (tho i think there's always a part of my mind observing, and so i just shift to this camera) and say "are we really hearing each other? do we want to? or are we just sort of shoving that stick around in the wound to stir up that dull thrill of intensity, that combat vibe, that sparring vibe?" i mean if some want to play in that cloud of electrons, cool, cool. i can understand. i just don't want to. my peace of mind is a precious thing, and i would guard it form thsoe who do not see as high a value in it. it is my peace of mind, after all.

not to say i won't sacrifice, or suffer, or work though grief/annoyance/anger for a good cause. but the point of this post is that i feel many of these battles have lost sight of the cause. and show this by the way they approach the conflicts.

Ok, you dragged me out of lurk mode with this post, and how beautifully you stated exactly how I feel, and why I have all but stopped writing for more than one blog that once seems like home to me. You said, and I second whole agree .."But I am not here for them—not any individual, and certainly not your fights that exist only to keep some mad cocktail of superiority and victimhood alive, some restless itch that is older than dust, some energy that serves to disturb and sow distrust."

This clear statement Nez, of how you feel about blog "wars," makes me even more glad that a good friend sent me over here. Your voice is strong, clear and oh so needed.

Nez:

Count me as one of the struggling. I recognize the wisdom but can't always embrace it. I do try not to be ugly, not always successfully. That is a great thing about your blog. Although I don't know whether you shit-can nasty comments I don't read them, here, or do so very infrequently.

Thanks for the words & the heart that goes with them.

bro, i am struggling too. i dont mean to say i'm above it allllll. i just want no part of that mix. others are free to dust it up in other places. we're free to do that on our own.

i dont trash too many comments like that. i mean, i trash the nasty "i hate mexicans" ones. but regular commenters here dont get into that stuff here. it's like a room or a yard or a street. if you keep it clean and respected, people dont feel cool littering it. they see your respect. but if its crammed with crap, beat up, dirty, stinks of beer or old sticky coffee or gasoline, and has butts and garbage lying around, who cares if they leave one more piece of trash lying around? so it's not a problem here.

thanks for your words and heart, too, my friend. imperfect as you we are, i welcome you here and am glad you come around.

I'm glad you are committed to keeping this a place to interact without the violent word-wrestling atmosphere. I have never read any of the blogs you linked, and while I can imagine how disappointing it must be to have one's voice shouted down, it seems cultivating respect by tempering anger with a little patience and insight will maintain a safe place for dialogue.

scribe, thanks so much. i'm glad you are here, too!

have baby must be brief

dont mean to say that abou those blogs...hmm that "your" pronoun is seemign problematic.

those are good blogs.

linked them to show how good people are getting burnt and frustrated with the dfynamic i go on to talk about.

thank you laura.

I've been wanting to make a post like this for some time. Not exactly the same, of course ... I know my strengths lie in sorting out the threads of conflict, even if I'm not so good at laying out solutions ... but we lost so much this time.

Three of my favorite, read-every-post-display-on-blogroll-keep-at-top-of-the-feed blogs closed entirely, for indefinite amounts of time. Three of my other favorites have expressed deep disillusionment or fatigue (you included). My Nashville friends are hurt. The WoC sphere is still smarting from the repeated waves of stupidity launched their... our way.

The only people who seem to have survived relatively unscathed are the ones that either stepped way back, or the ones that feed on anger and get off on bullying and intimidation.

I want a new path to trace.

Thank you for this, Nezua. Would that I could follow in your footsteps.

you can hang out in mi casa, if that will do. :)

i'm just sorry that this post sounds a tiny bit like i dont feel or care for those blogs. or that it seems to read that way. i don't mean that. i guess it's that sort of "i can't let myself get sucked down this whooshing drain" sort of protection that comes through. i stepped way back because my spidey sense told me it was a vortex of sound and fury. or...that's probably not entirely true. it's probably more true that i got lucky because my life upended and i didnt have the damn time to sit and research everything and without knowing what was up top to bottom, i didnt feel i had a right to comment. it's also true that after I wrote the true front of proggressivism and dealt with the emotional fallout, i decided to take on the blogosphere a different way. lucky for me, that way entailed not feeding into the flames so much. just in time.

I have a post brewing about the "new path." a positive one. one i feel good about. maybe its nobody else's path. but i feel i need to say it, to the moment, into the flow. and maybe just to grin into the hailstorm, i'll post it at JG's. we'll see. i was scribbling notes in the car ayer. and i do think we need to make a step toward a new direction. I feel focus has been lost. I know we all meant well. But we got lost in trying to address this last problem. And really, it's been coming for a while. And I don't think people are so much "at fault." I think there truly is a wave of energy. And I think it's easy to get caught up in an "end goal" and fight for that...forgetting that the journey is really the thing. it is the goal, too. and if we sacrifice HOW we do, it matters not WHERE we mean to go. our lives and days become hell. And who wants to hang out there?

Much love, Magniloquence. as a beat up card i used to keep in my dashboard said, "have faith. everything is all right." it's not that i always know that. it's that i always need a reminder.

*laughs* Oh, I didn't think you meant that you didn't like those blogs either. I actually see your approach as being closer to Aunt B's... working with compassion and concern for frith and growth, rather than stepping into the middle of the fight all the time. (Which, yes, it did take her a while to reassert that in the last storm... but that's neither here nor there, and more testament to the force of what happened than anything else.)

My point about the reason that I couldn't follow you was that I know that what you do, the way you grow ideas and put them out there and maintain this lovely space... that's not what I'm good at. Among other things, I'm not nearly social enough. (Sorry to everyone waiting for a response to a comment left at my place!) I think we need more people who have the ability to do those things, and who choose to do those things even in the face of a lot of pressure to get angry.

But I like what I do, mapping it out. I really wish I had better conclusions to draw... but I'm interested in diagramming conversations, and seeing if I can help bring people together by presenting arguments and contexts in ways that might not be as visible from the ground. It puts me in a lot of hurtful places, at first... I usually come down firmly on one side or another, and reading the anger of the opposition is like a slap in the face. But I think it's worth it, for now, even if it means less safety for the moment. If that changes, I'll find something else to do, I think.

I'd be really interested to see what you come up with for your new path. We need more positivity, more proactivity... less reaction and less hurt. If we can manage it.

(One thing about the arguments, though... I think a thing a lot of people forget is that for better or worse, we're pretty much stuck in a community together. These blogspats are often viewed and argued about as if nothing preceeded them... like we were in a room with strangers and a barfight broke out. But their aftermath stretches into the future, sharpens us for future debates... we have long memories, and even in unrelated incidents, there's always all of this complicated social history that has nothing to do with this argument or that fact, and everything to do with this-remembered-insult or that-remembered-injury. Which... isn't entirely bad. That's what we do, as people. But we don't think about it and it makes for a lot of impractical and infuriating advice from newcomers... which tends to make it worse. Hrm. Maybe I should write about that some time.)

oh, i think there is much use in debate and discourse. but i think the debate and discourse part has shrunk terribly. and the rancor and anger and projection and dehumanization has grown far too large a part of the debate.

i agree, we are all good at different things. and we all bring a part to bear. which is really cool. however, i also think that works best when we work cooperatively, rather than so...competitively.

When people, especially intelligent people, feel powerless, they can lose their focus sometimes. I remember back in the early seventies in the prison movement, reaching a point where, whenever I was approached with some "revolutionary idea," I would interrupt by saying, "Is this something we can implement by Thursday? Because if it isn't, I don't wanna talk about it." That was burn out. I'm over it now. But it sometimes feels as if we're farther away from resolution now than we were then. The trick is not to let "feelings" get in the way of what I know to be true. The Talmud says "Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it." And Nietzsche wrote "One must have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star."

yes, i've always very much loved that quote by Nietzsche. he spoke a lot about dancing. too bad he hated women too much to ask them out clubbing.

great lines from the Talmud. thank you.

For us there is only the trying, the rest is not our business--TS Eliot

Is Ilyka's blog shutting down? I haven't been able to read it for about a week. I'm out of the loop, always have been, alarmed my co-workers yesterday by not knowing who Amy Winehouse is, etc. But if anyone wants to update me on whatever you are all talking about, feel free.

Lots of this sounds like simple in-group-fighting to the rest of us, you know. If it's actually more than that (as it was for Biting Beaver and others who are physically threatened), then I apologize. But I am so tired of blogs that constantly refer to in-group arguments and fights that the vast majority of us don't know anything about, aren't important enough to be in on, and (truth be told) don't care about either.

At the risk of sounding like your grandma, let's get on with it, please! (meant with oodles of love for all lefty comrades)

yes, her blog is done.

it is in- and intra- and inter-group fighting. and yes, i'm sure some see it as more than that.

i'm sorry to refer to the fights. i will continue to do that. but at least i don't entertain or engage in them here. if i were to totally ignore them and not reference them, in certain cases i would be casting myself as utterly anti-social in that realm. because these fights are often very emotionally tied to certain people's experiences in the 3D. and that is one way to go, as a blog-writer. but many of these people are part of the blog community that gives this blog support in various ways. i choose not to alienate them.

but i am sorry to you and others who feel as you do, that even referencing them is annoying.

and it's okay, grandma. i don't mind. i only think that we are on with it. :)