The Disappeared

From June 9th, 2002 to November 2nd, 2005, a citizen of this country was disappeared.

And not that long ago, our elected representatives gave our president the power to disappear any of us.

But, as a country, we've been disappearing since long before all of this.

In 2004, roughly 40 percent of Americans didn't vote.

That's over 100,000,000 people. 100,000,000 who were too tired, too weak, too apathetic to speak. That's 100,000,000 whose voices weren't heard. Maybe they had a good reason not to vote, maybe not. Who knows? But we all know people who are too tired to care anymore, too tired to fight anymore, people who have lost hope in America. These people have already been disappeared.

In the twilight of the Roman Empire, the walls between civilization and chaos were crumbling. The amorphous, barbarian invaders were rattling the gates. Shadowy threats lurked everywhere, slowly creeping in. We live now in a similar time of uncertainty, and the only wall we have between the America we knew, and the America we fear is the strength of our civic fabric.

We're losing that strength; Civic participation has gone down:

The decline in voting has also accompanied a general decline in civic participation, such as church attendance, membership in professional, fraternal, and student societies, youth groups, and parent-teacher associations

But, to quote Shakespeare, "the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves."

We are a government of, by, and for the people. It is up to us to fight for our country. We are Atlas, holding the world on our shoulders. And every time someone loses faith or loses hope or loses the fight, that weight gets a little heavier for the rest of us.

GOTV is important because it helps win elections. But it's also important because a good candidate with grassroots support can rekindle that faith in government. A good candidate can get people excited about the health of the country. We need to support these kinds of candidates with everything we've got (and I don't just mean money). We need to help them get people excited again.

So here's my plan. I'm going to try to get one person--just one person--to care a little more.  I already have him in mind. I'm going to do everything I can to help him reappear. This may not sound like a lot, but, as we all know here at DKos, passion is contagious.

We've all been working hard this cycle: talking to friends and neighbors, giving our time and money, reading our computers until our eyes bleed. But I'm going to do one more thing. I'm going to find that "lost cause" of a man, that guy who is too drained to care anymore, and I'm going to do my best to change that.

The world's heavy, my shoulders are tired, and I could use some help. What do you guys think?

•  Tip me

  Now go tip these guys; we know they’ll fight hard.

  by Shef on Fri Oct 20, 2006 at 06:04:18 AM PDT