Sample some fine Texas whine, #Kossack style, folks

I love the Kossacks at Daily Kos, or rather, "love" them about like I love, or rather, "love" the Gnu Atheist Pharyngulac followers of P.Z. Myers, aka Pharyngula. Both Myers and Markos Moulitsas are cult-like blog leaders, for starters, with lots of motivated reasoning that churns out strange ideas at times.

One of Kos' most hilarious, of course, was the claim that there's a bunch of secret liberals in the CIA. Only thing that would have made that claim even funnier, in hindsight, would have been if he had said NSA. Beyond that, he's pretty much a total run it up the flagpole and salute it Obamiac who's made clear that politics as game, and beating the other team, is more important than the ideology you're carrying in your backfield. And, the Kossacks generally follow right along.

That leads me to MargaretPOA, trying to carry good water for Obama AND defend Texas against fellow Kossack's charges that ... it's Texas or something. This effort does indeed produce some fine Texas whine:

This effort [to evangelize in Texas] has been made much more difficult than it has to be by a minority of users who seem to revel in bashing Texans and anything Texas. This is almost always done in a broad brush sort of way and usually without any real knowledge of the state. There is also almost always a suggestion included that the United States should "let" Texas secede, (or even force us from the Union!), and so forth. This makes my job orders of magnitude more difficult because I like to direct people to Daily Kos in order to read the truth of a given topic. But head for the hills and Mary bar the door if that topic concerns Texas or Texans because I can depend on a small but very rowdy group of people to come around and start hurling insults, epithets and opinions about how everybody would be better off without Texas. ...

Now, come on! I don't come to your job and piss in your antifreeze or shit on your report! I have yet to see anybody at Daily Kos, (or elsewhere, really), suggest that Maine, Wisconsin or Ohio should be forced into Canada or that sawing off Florida would make the average I.Q. of the country go up. I don't remember anybody saying that Alaska should go back to Russia or that without Arizona we could do so much better.

OK, let's stop there and critique a few things, especially in the second graf.

First, nobody in any of the other states mentioned, as far as a governor of a state, has talked about seceding. Only Rick Perry. Wisconsin and Ohio, in political terms, are "purplish," not hard-core red. Ditto for Maine. Even Florida is less red than Texas. Alaska may be red, but any nuttery in the state centers on Sarah Palin far more than nuttery in Texas being confined to Arizona.

The second problem is that many an alleged liberal in Texas also practices what every Texas conservative does, MargaretDOA [sic]. It's called "Texas exceptionalism," the state-level equivalent of American exceptionalism, jingoism and all.

I finally had the light bulb about that come on when Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, with her first post-announcement campaign speech in Waxahachie, during the middle of the federal government shutdown, claim that Texans would never have such government disfunction, even though Texas had had exactly that during the Legislature's second special session and Davis' treatment during that, during her filibuster. After the lightbulb came the floodwaters of connecting the dots and putting them on paper, as I did here. As someone who lives in Texas, and has for a number of years, though I'm not a native, Texas exceptionalism disgusts me as much as American exceptionalism does. And, it disgusts me more when it comes from the mouth of a liberal than a conservative.

Meanwhile, since I was banned from Kos for being too much of a Green and too much of a real liberal, Margaret's biographic tidbits open her up for more criticism:

Fifty something Texas socialist who is indescribably tired of DC politicians arguing around the edges of policy while the middle class vanishes and the poor slowly become enslaved.

Really, a socialist? And you voted for Obama twice, and willingly? We have a Green Party in Texas, though not a Socialist one, at least not one with state ballot access and the same range of support. You have a choice.

And, you opted not to follow it.

And, in doing so, as a Kos member since 2005, you helped perpetuate all the easy stereotypes about Kossacks.

Have fun stewing in your fine Texas whine. Texas exceptionalism, served in a Kossack sippy cup. Guaranteed hangover.