On the sixteenth, I woke up to my normal morning routine and was surprised by an email by donotreply@dailykos.com. "Hm," I thought, "I don't remember seeing that email on the usual Kos mailers." I clicked, oddly without looking at the subject line. I was surprised to look back at this message:
Congratulations! An anonymous benefactor has purchased you a lifetime gift subscription to Daily Kos.
I'll admit that I wasn't expecting much out of this fundraiser. I saw this as a community divided, fractured by the ever-flooding tide of trolls and Paulites, and in the deepest chasms of Open Pie Warfare. And, as a relatively new and undistinguished user, I never expected that I would be in the now over 250 lucky users to receive the incredible gift of a lifetime subscription. I was also touched by the warm thanks for my contributions sent by my anonymous benefactor. I clearly had no appropriate time to thank him properly. I do so now. This was a gesture of pure kindness, the kind that we so rarely see in this crazy world anymore.
When I want to see these gestures, I come here. This community is magic, between the opportunities for debate, to the calls to unite, to the pleas for assistance that we are so good at collectively answering.
Using Kos used to be a laggy and irritating trial, as my computer is not particularly impressive, to say the least. Let me give you no doubt that this subscription is a fantastic idea for those of us with slow Internet. Removing the ads, often rife with HTML and other browser-clogging crap, is worth it, let alone the added benefits of the upcoming photo-cooperative and the free E-books. (I got this close to buying American Taliban. But, really, getting it as a free E-book will save money--paper, really!) Do it, guys. Let's make this fundraiser even more impressive.
And let's keep working to our goal of More and Better Democrats- but I'm sure we'll have plenty of time for More And Better DKos!