Why did I pop for a lifetime subscription to DailyKos?
Short answer: What the heck. It was a Channukkah present to myself. I read dKos all the time, and might as well avoid the ads.
Longer answer below the fold.
I'm not a Democrat because of LBJ.
I'm not a Republican because of Nixon.
I've been saying that since I could vote, which was the election after those two. I tended to be to the right of my parents, largely liberal but registered Republicans in our very conservative New York county. Rockefeller was governor of New York, and I thought he was okay, though Attica could have been handled better. I wasn't exactly in favor of the Vietnam War, but I was young and foolish and if my country needed me I would have gone. I still have my draft card.
I still consider my self a conservative, in the sense that I actually want to conserve something. Mostly, the environment.
During the 1980 election, I was half-convinced to vote for Reagan. I wasn't quite that stupid, but I kept thinking to myself, "Hey, a balanced budget wouldn't be so bad." Reagan and the Republicans (with the conservative Democrats) promptly quadrupled the national debt and demonstrated that a) Conservatives are always wrong and Republicans are always lying, b) Government spending drives the economy and c) The Soviet Union was our #1 enemy, but it wasn't our only enemy.
By this time I'd moved to Minnesota. This means that, except for an early sojourn in my birth state of Massachusetts, I've always lived in a state that bordered Canada. I don't think I could live anywhere that didn't snow at least some of the winter.
It also means I've always lived in a state that went for the Democratic presidential candidate, win or lose. I still don't feel like a Democrat, but I'm not a Republican because I can pronounce all the syllables in the word "democratic".
I come from a newspaper background, so hold journalistic standards high. Alas, newspapers today do not.
I went to a few summer camps as a kid and learned... don't shit where you sleep. As a science fiction reader and historian by avocation, the sweep of the future means... don't shit where you sleep. I'm a political junkie by upbringing, an environmentalist by necessity.
I wound up hosting and producing Shockwave Radio Theater for almost thirty years. Shockwave is science fiction humor at its finest. We wrote original science fiction radio plays, interviewed all sorts of interesting people, played all sorts of strange music and got our political digs in. When Jesse Ventura became governor of Minnesota, I declared that "politics is a subset of science fiction humor". This has helped my reporting.
I'm pretty sure I'm the only person to have interviewed Gov. Jesse Ventura, Dr. Demento, Douglas Adams, Bruce Schneier, Phil Proctor, Joe Romm, Markos Moulitsas AND penguins in Antarctica. (most of these are available through the link to my portal page, above)
The aforementioned Joe Romm is my brother, writer/editor of Climate Progress. Both of us are environmentalists, and try to prod The Powers That Be into paying attention.
Through science fiction fandom, I found an outlet for my parallel interests of publishing magazines and enlightening the world through humor. When the internet came along, I gleefully spent time on irc channels, local BBSes and other forums. When the Web came along, I had an early web page (my site was announced on the Mosaic home site when it went up!) and gleefully used the Web as a resource. I loved being able to make a political statement on irc, and back it up with a link to a web page.
When the social networks rose in the ashes of failed experiments such as the CNN chat channel or the creaking of comparatively ancient GUIs like AOL and Myspace, I dug right in.
Which takes me to Daily Kos. Hey, I told you this was the long version.
In the early days of dKos (pre-Facebook for me), this site was more of a community, with shared opinions, lively discussions and useful links.
Bloggers aren't journalists, though journalists can be bloggers. If you want to be considered a primary source, you have to do the legwork. DKos was a breath of fresh air for those right-wing blogs that simply linked to each other and created an echo chamber of the most vile lies and distortions.
DKos was not and is not now immune to such echo chambers. Too often the opinion du jure is repeated without adding to the discussion, and too often those opinions are, in my view, wrong. Still, it's far better than the out-and-out hatemongering that passes for political thinking on many blogs... or in many mainstream media outlets.
I went to the Netroots Nation conference last summer, when it was here in Minneapolis. Pictures and Interviews from Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3.
Frankly, I was disappointed. I met some fine people doing some great work, but overall I didn't feel much hope that things would change. Few people wanted to challenge racist nutjobs on their own terms, and preferred to tiptoe around the high moral ground. Sure, that might feel nice, but it doesn't win elections. Hence Netroots Nation Echo Chamber: Epic Coverage Fail.
Whatever the "Daily Kos Community" might be, I don't feel part of it.
So... why subscribe? And for a lifetime, no less.
Because as wimpy as this site is, it's still a shining beacon of good links to actual journalism and a repository of sensible commentary if you dig hard enough. I like my pundits rounded up and abbreviated, my charts to use data from reliable sources and my op-ed pieces to have less snark and more reality... though a little snark is okay.
Not unlike the Obama presidency, dKos is not perfect, but it's the best we have, and I will encourage people to continue their fine reality-based efforts. Politics is a vector: Movements have direction and strength. I don't like voting against someone, though I have been backed into that too often. I'm still not a Democrat, but there hasn't been a Republican worth voting for in a long time. DKos has barely added to the political debate, but maybe it can help those who are changing the political landscape for the better.
So. There you have it. Not precisely a vote of confidence. More of a gesture of encouragement. $100 to a political candidate won't get you invited to lunch. A C-Note Lifetime Subscription helps give voice to several hundred politically active, intelligent people (and may help you ignore the several thousand who aren't so much of either).
If you've made it this far: Thanks for listening. If you haven't: Oh well. You're in the right place.