I wrote this diary 8 years ago in defense of Pootie and Woozle diaries, in defense of social diaries and connecting with people online. My Space? I think not.
Yes, I'm responding to the diary at the top of the rec list. Why? Because I believe that those diaries, the warm fuzzies, serve a very real purpose for the people here who are working their asses off for Democrats.
We're worn down. We're tired. We're just fucking fed up. The last eight years have been an endless nightmare for some. The details of this nightmare are not important, they've been tracked and plotted by graphs and carefully written diaries. Many here are painfully aware of just how bad it has gotten.
But we have to laugh, we have to stop and relate to others on a personal level or all the work we do to elect more and better Democrats amounts to nothing at all.
I want to update this, not just to in honor of our dear Tricia, but to remind people that as we bicker and fight, as we bloody each others noses and kick each other in the shins, we ultimately are in this together. We all fight for the same thing.
And, despite that shocking condescension from BOTH sides, progressives and liberals, Democrats and Democratic socialist, come in all shapes and sizes, all shades, all ages and all kinds of demographics. We’ve focused so much on why a majority of some have chosen to vote Clinton and why a majority of another have chosen to vote Sanders, but what we seem to keep forgetting is that the majority of us here do not want another eight years of a George W. Bush. Or, even worse, we don’t want Donald Trump as our President.
I understand that we feel so very passionately about our candidates, that we have a very good reason to. Many Clinton’s supporters have waited eight years for her turn. And, some believe this is true, that it is her turn. She has earned this and she is the right choice. I am not here to argue about who is the right choice, I am here to point out why passions are running so high.
Many Sanders’ supporters, like me, have known of Senator Sanders for years. This is not our first time feeling the Bern. I’ve been a fan of Bernie’s for as long as I’ve been a blogger at Daily Kos. He’s not a newcomer to politics OR this site.
In comparison to the Republican party, they are not the lesser of two evils for me when it comes to a women’s right to choose, our next Supreme Court Justice, the basic belief in science over religion in our political arena, equality for many of those who live in our Country when it comes to women’s rights, LGBT rights, people of color, etc. It’s a vast difference on many levels.
There are differences for the candidates that I will NOT get into in this diary because it is not meant to be yet another pie fight, but it is meant to point out what is good about being a Democrat, is that we do care about people.
And we fight hard. And we care about so many people.
I am proud of our party. I am proud of this site. I am proud that I supported all those diaries early on, the community it built and the wonderful person who built it. I was missing for a long time, I fought my own personal fights and I still do. I helped put my own ex-husband on a local school board, where he STILL sits today. I’ve helped local candidates and still hope to do so. I want to keep writing and fighting. I hope that I have contributed in some small way. I sincerely hope that I brought some smiles to our dear Tricia when I popped in to support her efforts. It all MATTERS.
We are better than this people, than dividing and we all belong here fighting for our beliefs. But we can do it without tearing each other down. I know we can, I believe in you.
If anyone here knows me well enough, they will know that I am respectful and that I will listen and hear you. That is the first thing about the fight in my mind. ALL OF US WANT TO BE HEARD. Do you not think that many of those who vote for Trump are merely angry because they’ve been unheard for so long?
Imagine if we not only put kindness first, but empathy. If we attempted to try to put aside our assumptions and attempted to understand that we cannot know what it’s like to be someone else. How can you declare that sexism is dead? How can you say that racism is not alive and well in America if you are not in fact a person of color? Oh wait, you can’t. How can you assume that every young person does not in fact know why they are voting for Sanders because you’ve run across some young people who don’t know. Wow, they must all be in the dark.
You see, we’ve oversimplified each other to the point that we have turned each other into stereotypes and cut outs. This is why community matters. It allows us to hear each others stories, to learn why we fight the way we do, to learn why people act as they do. Politics is personal because it touches us so deeply. And the outcome of this election will affect not only us, but our future, as far as I can see, for a long time to come.
I have a twelve-year-old, soon to be thirteen. She predicted a President Obama. She argued with fellow students on why he was not a Muslim, or in fact, why his religion was irrelevant at all at the age of 8. She currently is attempting to educate her fellow 7th graders why voting for Trump is just not a good idea. And yes, she’s for Bernie Sanders. (She also played one of her favorite games as Donald Drumpf and attempted to evict fellow players in the Dens to be “funny”. Tell me this girl doesn’t know what’s going on).
So, here I am, a single parent, a generation xer, asking many of you to attempt to learn about your fellow kossack and to see that we all fight for many of the same things, but do so in a very different manner. But the ultimate goal is this, to make sure that we do not have a President Trump, Cruz or Rubio.
And even better, that we wrest control of the Senate back from the Republican party. And, hopefully, that we can also win some seats back in Congress. Yes, local matters too.
So, for Tricia, our Pootie Lady, I ask that you carry on that torch, not to just laugh a little, but to learn about your fellow fighter in Democratic unity. That we can disagree but to do so with more dignity and more compassion, with some empathy and a lot more class.
And some memes because I want to. And yes, I own a Corgi:
UPDATE:
My Charlotte and Calvin: