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Edited on Sat Jan-02-10 01:09 AM by RoyGBiv
I battled with whether to make this a response to Nance's thread because it is part of the inspiration for this. But, it's more than that, and I had a basic idea of what I wanted to say before I read her, hopefully temporary, farewell to DU. This is mostly "stream of consciousness," not a thought out post. I'm just sharing here ...
I spent the holiday at my mom's house in Oklahoma City. From the moment I left my apartment for the drive from Houston there, I had in my mind that I would not think much about politics for the next several days. Before leaving I posted my thoughts in the African-American group on the prejudiced attitudes of many self-proclaimed leftists. I read the comments, posted a thank you, and left it there. Some part of me felt it would be one of my last substantive posts to DU. I'm tired of this nonsense, tired of the people who think that by being participants in this forum they are somehow involved in a rebellious movement against "the man" and who do little else than attempt to spread their nihilism.
I don't like nihilists. I have no use for them. I'd rather spend all my time around Sarah Palin worshipers than people who don't believe in anything but blowing up the world just to prove some bizarre point only they care about.
But my time away from DU helped me regain some perspective. Perspective is the key.
I realized about the time I posted again a couple days ago, exchanging a few barbs with people I will no longer apologize for calling idiots, that I was spending far too much energy worrying about what people thought of what I say here, specifically people who do nothing but spread their negativity and don't seem to have the first clue about how to effect positive change.
I'm better than that, and I won't apologize for saying so. Most of the people in this sub-forum are better than that too. I make this judgment not from a like-mindedness of view on President Obama, but from having paid attention to the comments that have been made over the years by many of you. I'd really like to call a few people out here, in both good and bad ways, but I won't in the hopes this won't be deleted. Suffice to say I believe we can all point to several prolific posters in GD and GDP who've never found an issue they couldn't complain about yet who have never offered a single bit of constructive advice on what to do about it, and I think all of us know many people in this sub-forum who have done and do quite a lot in an attempt to adhere to President Obama's charge that *we* are the change we were looking for.
How I came to this possibly self-evident realization involved spending a lot of time with my daughter, one of her friends, and one of my old, radical, leftist, wanna-be hippy liberal friends.
My daughter is my my grandmother's great-grandchild. She's headstrong, smart, and takes no shit. Her friend is young gay man who has suffered too much abuse. My friend is an older gay man who has fought his own battles and has come out radicalized. I'm just, as I said elsewhere, a dumb white guy from the South with a thick accent and bad teeth. I know *nothing* about adversity compared to these people.
We spent most of our time playing Wii, but in between cursing the Rainbow Road portion of the Mario race game and trying to figure out how to keep the cats off the pad while we tried to do the stillness test for Wii Fit, we talked a lot. While little of it was directed specifically at politics, almost all of it was in some sense political.
The four of us, separately, have done a great deal in the last year in an attempt to be the change we were looking for. I spent 16-20 hour days on occasion working on two separate campaigns, one successful (mayor of Houston), one not (lowering out-of-pocket costs for HCC students). My daughter has been a mover and shaker on the OU campus for issues like equal rights for homosexuals and working to subvert the effort to distribute copies of Darwin's Origin of Species pre-pended with a creationist garbage. Her friend has been there at her side in addition to focusing on his own specific causes, e.g. making sure "art" is still a part of the "liberal arts." My friend ... well, he's been unemployed since Fannie Mae laid off a sizable part of its workforce, and he's spent his time in DC being the radical's radical. He's disrupted teabagger events. He's spent days hanging out trying to talk to Congresspeople. He's hijacked local radio shows to express his views. He's ridden with his biker club in support of equal rights ... busy guy.
Here's the kicker. They all have differing viewpoints on where Obama is in the grand scheme of things, but when asked this question directly:
"What do you think of people who refer to Obama as a disappointment?"
They all said the following, separately ...
"They're idiots."
All of these people have criticisms of things that have been or have not been done by this administration. Not a one of them had a complaint that would allow them to call Obama himself a disappointment. My friend -- a man so radical he has forced me to reconsider my definition of "radical" -- even said those who are calling for an investigation of Rahm need some serious psychiatric counseling, or at the very least an education in what it takes to get *anything* done in Washington, with which he has more than a little familiarity.
I came away from all of this with a new perspective, which boils down to this.
Fuck 'em. DU is for Democrats. We have our disagreements, sure, but the utter insanity on full display with many of the loudest posters here now mean nothing. They haven't done a damn thing but complain. They didn't listen to Obama during his campaign, and they never thought they would actually have to work at it, unless they consider "work" sitting on their ass on a message forum whining about whatever some talking-head on their TeeVee told them to whine about.
So, screw it. I'm staying, and woe be to those morons who think I don't belong here at the *Democratic* Underground.
OnEdit: clarity
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