I've had a really hard time lately putting my feelings into words, and writing something down worth any substance at all. It's been very difficult for me, to be doubting our POTUS, when I was so fervently in his camp before the Afghanistan war escalation and the loss of the public option. I don't think I ever believed that Barack Obama was the messiah per se, but I believed in him, as a person. Perhaps I foolishly thought that he was above the fray, that he would start to make things right, that this country would eventually climb out of the enormous hole we've dug for ourselves.
I don't really know yet, because these feelings are so new. I suspect that I won't really know for quite some time. Hindsight is always 20/20, as they say.
I've lost friends on this website because of this. Good friends, friends that I thought would be "forever friends". I've lost writing opportunities because of this. I've had to reevaluate my entire reason for coming back to Daily Kos because of this. And even though I've burned a ton of bridges, I still come back to gauge the temperature of the netroots part of the Democratic Party because it's what I'm used to doing. Sometimes I feel like I'm beating my head up against a wall, but sometimes not. Sometimes I feel like nothing will be right for me on Daily Kos again, but sometimes not.
I think I played a part in this, yes. Absolutely, I did. It's not that I'm trying to skirt my responsibility here, but when you make the insults against me personal, and when you gossip about me and believe what others say about me without bothering to figure it out for yourself, I'm not going to admit said responsibility to you because I'd just be wasting my breath/keystrokes. I feel that, in those cases, you've already made a decision about me and I probably can't change your mind about it. I am far from perfect, and I'm more than willing to admit my mistakes to folks who act with some civility and no hidden agenda.
THINGS TO REMEMBER/QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF
January 2, 2010
by Shiz
- I am not Jane Hamsher. I am not FDL. As I've said before, Grover Norquist can suck it.
- I am not a teabagger. Please stop calling us that - it's insulting on a really icky, skeevy level.
- If you make insults against people personal, why do you do that? I'd like you to seriously think about this. Do you feel better about yourself when you do?
- If you follow certain Kossacks around just to diss them, why do you do that? I'd like you to seriously think about this. Do you feel better about yourself when you do?
- If you're so interested in driving me off this website again, shouldn't you engage yourself in a worthwhile hobby? Like knitting or something?
- I don't hate President Obama. Not even remotely do I hate him - I'm just disappointed in him, and I'd like to see him adopt some more liberal stances before his term is up. I'd love it very much if he succeeded.
- I don't hate you, those who disagree with me policy-wise. I probably dislike you if you insult me personally, but that's about it. I like it when we disagree on policy, but can still be friends.
- Yes, I still want to be a professional, paid blogger. That is The Goal™. I see nothing wrong with admitting this. In fact, if I become gainfully employed at some point, I will absolutely let you know. :) Hell, I'll put it in each diary and everything.
All that being said, it is a New Year, and I am becoming increasingly worried about this huge fracture within the Democratic Party and, specifically, within the netroots. Although I don't have any stats on what percentage of the DNC is netroots-affiliated, I think it's smaller than what I had previously imagined. In any case, I see the idealist side of the netroots as having a supreme problem with motivation and stamnia. We're just not interested anymore, and we want to be friends instead. From today's Marianne Williamson piece in HuffPo, entitled Where Does a Democrat Go From Here?:
What the current administration is giving us is minimal change. And not because the President hasn't had the time to do better; if he had truly wanted to make fundamental change, he would have gone in there fast and done his own version of shock and awe in the first hundred days. And not because he didn't realize how mean all those Republicans can be, either; Obama knew what he was getting into, and if he didn't, then he was as unprepared for the job as his opponents said he was.
I think I stated this in a comment somewhere, but (for those of us who fall into the "idealist" spectrum of the netroots) the bottomline problem is that, after 8 years of capitulating lots of crap under Clinton, and 8 years of hell under Bush, we are just supremely exhausted. We gave our all to volunteer for Obama, and local candidates, in the 2008 election season. We're tired, and we feel the fight leaving our bodies, sometimes less so, and sometimes moreso. We're kind of freaked out about that and we're unsure about where to go from here.
I don't know how to get motivated again, but I DO know that the methods other Kossacks have tried using on me heretofore simply do not work.
More Williamson:
I see all things political in light of the immense unnecessary suffering in the world. Republicans see it and say, "Wow, it's sad about all that suffering, but the government has no proper role in assuaging it. Hopefully the private sector will do something. That would be nice." The Democrats -- not all of them but enough of them, and definitely this President -- see all that suffering and say, "Wow, it's sad about all that pain people are going through. Let's try to assuage it."
And yet they're refusing to do anything to challenge the underlying forces that make all that suffering inevitable.
That is what I see as being the fundamental issue here. I applaud the many efforts and progressive reform passed by President Obama in his almost-year in office. I just want more of those! A metric fuckton more!
All this talk, on either side of the divide, of "You're either with us or against us!", is not helpful. Idealists realize that incremental change is necessary in our American political landscape, but cannot rectify that incremental change with their intuition that we are in major, major serious trouble here. Country-wise and party-wise.
Again, back to the article:
He bailed out the banks, but he didn't stipulate that they had to start lending again. He got us health care, but he wouldn't say a word about single payer and he wouldn't raise a finger for the public option. He won the Nobel Peace Prize, but accepted it with a speech that was an apologia for war.
And, thusly, we're disappointed. We're all heartbroken and shit.
In the comments, instead of the usual tit-for-tat that we've been playing around with for far too long, can we please begin to see some solutions? I'd like to know what Kossacks far and wide think regarding what we're going to do about all of this. I'd also like some honest, thoughtful feedback, so those of us with the energy and the drive can begin to take action. We have 11 months until the 2010 elections.
So what now, Democrats?