I notice that this site has become the boogeyman in some media circles. We're either unpatriotic loons set on destroying the country, or criminals
hacking websites. Nothing could be further from the truth. For those that have just come to Daily Kos because of hearing about it in the news, or if those of you in the media have happened across my little diary, those of us here at Daily Kos are here because we love our country, and know it can be better than what it is now.
We see the darkness in our world & believe that something should be done about it. We see corruption & inequality within our society & believe something should be said about it. We see men & women struggling to make ends meet for themselves & their children, and believe they deserve better. We see a war being fought by inept politicians & believe we should stop it. But above all else, we see a President & a ruling party who stands at the center of all of these issues & believe a change is needed.
There is a picture & quote that gives me perspective in things like this...
The picture below was taken by
Voyager 1 from a distance of about 4 billion miles away. Earth is the little dot the arrow is pointing to, caught in sunlight reflecting off the lens of Voyager's camera. In his book
Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan interpreted the picture's significance this way...
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there -- on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
....Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
....Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner....
....How frequent their misunderstandings....
....How eager they are to kill one another....
....How fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light....Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand....There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
...There are some of us who believe the
Pale Blue Dot is worth fighting for, and can be made better for everyone. We are at this site because we care. For those in the media & elsewhere that find something sinister or can't understand that, I pity them...