Please people of Dailykos, listen to me this one time. I truly believe much of Dkos has become an obstacle to our goals.
I respect and admire so many people that I've encountered in 6 months of visits here, but I've come to realize that although Dkos and its members could move MOUNTAINS with directed action, that is not what has happened and I fear it never will.
I've spent a little while checking the progress of initiatives put forward in diaries here, and I am truly saddened by what I've found. A few kind souls take action, but it looks like too many of us can barely sign online petitions. Great diaries written with care that propose real action, ones which give us all the necessary info to help us move to action, simply fade away, or become bloated with comments and tidbits of info-gossip at best.
We should be ashamed. Any of us that have sons or nieces or brothers or sisters should hang our heads at this travesty. It's true that information can be addictive and distracting and truer still that facing the daunting task ahead of us isn't easy but that excuse does nothing. We type into the void here. We fragment over subleties of dogma or semantics or spelling. We are failing as we speak.
I am guilty of this as well. I popped into this site back in the Spring and read the top stories and was energized. I actually used some of the information I gleaned. I put half my life savings into the last election and did some real work.
Later, though, I made the mistake of looking at more than a top diary or two, and then started looking at the comments. They drew me in, and though the process was slow it was relentless. I was pulled into the info-soap-opera as well.
I was taught that one talks because one has something to say, and so I just read quietly, until the frustration took hold. I became angry because I knew deep down inside that I myself was doing nothing but feeding my need for....distraction. My first actual post was angry, and to be honest most of my other posts were just like the first. Angry at the pettiness, the waste of time, the snapping and the condescension. But mainly I was angry at myself for the same thing. We are failing here. We are losing our way. No, not the tireless ones that bring us new and reasoned strategies for change, but the 90% of us that collect at the edges of that hard work and merely act busy.
If you're good at math, don't try and calculate the time spent on idle comments here, or the time good and able people spend reading them. It will only depress you.
I, for one, will find ONE issue tomorrow that I'll work on each day. I will stay away from anything that keeps me from fighting the most important fight my short life has ever seen. I owe it to my little nephews, and to my country, and to my world.