I may be new to socialism, but I've been part of a lot of progressive political movements over the last twenty years or so, all of which have had women in them. Many have been led by women. This is the first movement I've ever seen where there's an apparent expectation that everyone needs to weigh in on personal drama, regardless of the degree to which they are involved.

The last time someone was behaving like a creep on a campaign I worked on, the situation was handled in private, by someone in a position to stop the behavior (in that case, me), the offender was unceremoniously shown the door, and that was the end of it. There was no online drama, there was no need for anyone who was not involved to take a position, and we certainly didn't all split off into dueling factions based on which nuance of the situation each camp failed to fully comprehend. That's because it was nobody's fucking business except for the people directly involved.

It strikes me that the people who let themselves get sucked into other people's personal affairs are the ones who don't care about getting health care, or at least not as much as they care about having petty squabbles that let them feel self-righteous toward their peers.

Do you realize that literally no one else in politics handles their shit like this? If socialism means that I have to weave my way through a labyrinth of Twitter threads so I can finally find the set of private messages that clear it all up so I can take the correct position on something between online microcelebrities I've never even heard of before, then it's no fucking wonder the movement can never seem to get off the ground. Just what in the hell does any of this gossipy nit-picky drama have to do with fighting capitalism?

I thought some of the general assemblies in McPherson Square got a bit too carried away with tangential bullshit, but this makes Occupy look like the goddamn United Nations. The entire appeal of the so-called "dirtbag left" for me is that I thought it's supposed to be a group to the left of the Democrats that didn't waste its time on this type of recriminatory pettiness.