Boy, the rude awakenings you get sometimes.
As a hermit (obligate telecommuter who does not socialize much in real life) who does not live in his mother's basement, I can tell people on Daily Kos some things -- things about weird obsessions and strange perceptions.
The other day, I had a nightmare -- not the kind where the Prince of the Damned or Mike Huckabee serves you breakfast. No, it wasn't one of those where you wake up screaming. It was more the type where your subconscious is desperately trying to get through to you, and it makes its point very very clear.
Basically, the message from my subconscious was -- dude, you don't belong anywhere. That is, there are no people or group to whom you belong.
When I found Daily Kos in early 2006, it was a godsend to me. Finally, I thought, there are at least some people who see the world relative to how I see it.
In the last, oh, six months or so, it has become less and less that way.
And, before you think I'm whining -- it's not about others, it's about what I thought this place was, what was being built, but it's not that way.
You see, I have some political friends, and after thinking about it for a while, I just don't have the head for politics, and this is, after all, a political site.
It is also said this is a community site, but in the heat of the presidential campaigns, it becomes less about community and more about winning. Winning against the Republicans, winning against interests groups -- getting your way. That's not "wrong" per se. It's the game.
And I have learned, sometimes I think to my cost, what politics is all about -- or at least how it is practiced in the real world.
Politics is about building coalitions .. about compromise, tactics, and gambits. It is what you would get if Machiavelli were to play chess with the Marquis de Sade.
And once you finally win, if you get that far and you happen to be the payload on the tip of that ugly rocket, it's about waking up in the morning and doing business with people whose philosophy you may or may not despise.
And the more I think about it, the more time I have spent on this place, with longer and longer breaks -- the more I realize that what I am about is changing the game, not actually playing it.
Politics is eternal. So you're not going to get rid of it, nor should anyone want to. In the final analysis, all interactions between three or more human beings becomes political in a sense.
So anyway, back to the nightmare.
I realize I have no people - but I care about the fate of some more than others. And I've started to wonder why I care more about this than that.
I care more about the young gay kid ostracized by his Mormon parents and stuck in a rehabilitation facility than I do a soldier in Iraq.
Is it the plight of the kid is worse than the soldier in Iraq? Not at all. But we care I think about those with whom we personally identify more than people with whom we don't.
This primary season has been hard on me and led me to question some of my most basic assumptions.
And I've read all the diaries -- diaries that in effect have that haunting plaintive "can't we all just get along" quality, and others that in effect say "primary season is brutal - live with it".
So I've been trying to think about why it's been hard on me, since I'm not really in either of those two camps.
Part of it, I think, is the liberties people allow themselves -- I'm just as guilty of it -- when it comes to passionate advocacy.
We've been hearing a lot from the Obama campaign in recent days about unity -- but to put it civilly, and let's face it -- politically charged times are not about unity. It's about winning, and let's face it, sticking it to the other guy.
I don't and never did expect unity on a political site, unity among Democrats. What is missing, though, are two things .. honesty and, though I can't put it quite into succinct words, a political system that is designed to accommodate everyone.
I am reminded of this:
You can't always get what you want,
You can't always get what you want,
You can't always get what you want,
But if you try sometimes, you just might find,
You get what you need.
-Rolling Stones
I hear a lot about dastardly things that were done by this person and that, and apologies which are issued either before or after the dastardly deed is done .. apologies that don't contain the word "apology" and actions that continue despite the fact that people know they are wrong, and that entire classes of people are being marginalized.
We have a lot of people being marginalized in this country, and I fear that it's going to get worse before it gets better.
It is up to us, the people, to make sure our candidates act in a manner consistent with their rhetoric -- to the degree that is possible. That politics, no matter how ugly it gets, has some baseline of fairness and honesty.
And when you don't have that, I'm not sure how much any rhetoric counts, no matter how high sounding it is.
I'd rather deal with the honest person who hates me than the dishonest one who pretends to be my friend. That's human nature I guess.
Dishonesty comes in many flavors. It comes in the flavor of presuming to carry the banner for people whose troubles and problems you really don't understand, and whose basic humanity you still advocate suppressing on some level. It comes in the flavor of calling for unity while practicing disunity. It comes in the flavor of saying there is going to be change when there is really no intention of changing -- and, yes, I point this at all the candidates.
The problem is, people are not only not getting what they want out of the political system in our country today, they aren't getting what they need.
But most importantly, we have a lot of things to do in this country -- one year less one day before the Chimp in Chief departs for good. It cannot wait a year, it cannot wait a day. While it's nice to say "we don't have time for politics as usual" that isn't going to happen -- there would be politics as usual even were the whole country is burning.
But the whole country IS burning -- only figuratively right now, thankfully. And our political system fails when there are people for whom it just doesn't work at all.