My diaries need more cowbell.
The mistakes we make when we try to imagine our personal futures are lawful, regular, and systematic. They have a pattern that tells us about the powers and limits of foresight in much the same way that optical illusions tell us about the powers and limits of eyesight.
Daniel Gilbert -- Stumbling on Happiness
I've read a number of diaries and comments on dKos that include the line "people at dKos don't care about..." For example, this happened when I was reading
arodb's diary
Bush veto, and the authoritarian personality. When I read it, 7 people had posted. Personally, I thought that was pretty good, because that was 4 more posts than I have on my
Sunday diary.
For those of you who see 7 posts and say that's 7 Kossacks who care, mouth the words "well, duh..." and please skip to the second paragraph past the fold, b/c after that the political stuff starts. Those of you who think 7 posts mean people at dKos don't care about an issue, I think we can agree on the problem and the solution.
So if you see the postings of 7 people as proof that people here at dKos don't care about an issue, I'm curious, do you have feelings that the world is full of problems? Because I am here to say that the feelings you have about the world being full of problems is undeniably true. So, your feelings that way are correct. Give yourself a pat on the back for your empathy. I hope we can agree on the problem and the solution. Here they are. Here's the problem: You are the problem. I don't mean that to be negative, I mean that to be helpful. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If your brain is in "the world is full of problems" mode, you are only seeing nails. Odds are your brain is feeling much like it only has one tool to confront these problems, and for the brain, that tool looks and quacks and walks like a hammer. I want to give you a phrase - repeat after me: "You deserve better."
I liked emeraldmaiden's They told me to write a diary, where she wrote:
And here I sit, thinking over the diaries and comments I have read over the last few days on DKos. I'm sensing quite a theme here - we're all frustrated, overwhelmed by the chaos that our country (and the world) have been thrown into by the Bush administration's policies. Clammyc's diary that I just read is a good example of this. He's frustrated to the point of meltdown, and I don't blame him. Others have expressed their frustration in comments.
If you accept this statement as true, guess what, this random sample of people reflects the feeling of the electorate out there -- count on it.
Now, those of you who know you deserve better, and those of you who earlier learned the phrase "You deserve better...," go to the mall (no, after you finish this), go to the coffee shop, go somewhere and find a person and start a conversation about the most political thing that bothers you. Instead of saying "It sure is hot...," try "Do you think this is global warming...?" If the person thinks so, replying to them with a "well we deserve better, don't we," is the start of a good conversation about politics. (Act cool, when they cock their head and say "huh," it's your opening to say "I mean the scientists, I think we need to fund research to figure this heat out. We deserve better than politicians who say this isn't global warming...") If the person doesn't agree, look at them and say, "well, I think we deserve better."
We deserve better.
This is the theme I keep pushing in stuff I'm writing for campaigns.
We deserve better.
We deserve better leadership.
We deserve better security.
We deserve better peace.
We deserve better education for our children.
We deserve a better environment.
But I'll let you in on a secret.
lean forward...
IT ISN'T GOING TO HAPPEN UNTIL YOU DEMAND IT.
Sorry (no I'm not), I just wanted to make my point clear...
And I don't just mean demand it on DailyKos. I mean call your candidate. Write your newspaper. Visit the oppositions office. Tell them "you deserve better." Because, well, you deserve better.
And when the electorate starts telling the leaders "I deserve better," we'll get better leaders.
I'm not going to get better until I demand it. You aren't going to get better until you demand it. And the voters aren't going to get better until they demand it.
Your simple contribution to getting the electorate to demand better is to spread this earworm - "You deserve better."
I'll leave you with James Patrick Hogan and some diary rescue.
James Patrick Hogan, was born in London, (1941) to a working class family. He writes science fiction based on "hard" science, which makes his books popular among scientists as well as the public. Many of his books also blend science fiction with politics. His more recent books include Mind Matters: Exploring the World of Artificial Intelligence (1998), Cradle of Saturn (1999), and The Legend that was Earth (2000).
He said, "I like playing with ideas that invite people to think. I also like old-fashioned, upbeat themes and happy endings. Although life doesn't always seem that way, I believe that in the long term things get better. I don't think we're about to overpopulate the planet, blow ourselves into oblivion, poison ourselves into extinction, degenerate into Nazis, or disappear under our own garbage. For ten thousand years the power of human reason and creativity has continued to build better tomorrows, and nothing says it has to change now."
See http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/...
Diary rescue on this theme:
RevRandy
1931 Germany - 2006 America
http://www.dailykos.com/...
ultrageek
Just putting it together...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
And don't forget your hobbies. One of mine is movies. Please see plf515's
Politicians as movie characters".