Most diary entries here don't start like this: Yesterday I played a round of golf with a friend who is, sadly, a Fox-news-spouting Repuglican. Golf? Friend? Repuglican? Kos?
This isn't about Tim.
Most Saturday mornings at dawn, I play golf with a group of guys from my office. This week, everyone but Tim and I bailed, so off we went, me in my Obama 08 hat and Tim-Who-Watches-O'Reilly. Tim and I have had occasional political conversations, so I know where he stands on all of this. And we both politely steer clear of politics for the most part. But I toss him a little bait sometimes. These days it's mostly to see whether he's stepped clear of the dead-enders and started to listen to any other narratives. He hasn't. A lost cause.
On the way home afterward, I started to think about the last several years. I've had to be so cautious about what I say to whom. I live in Upstate New York, which has trended quite Democratic in the past few years, but we have our share of wingnut yahoos. (A couple of years ago, my wife was nearly driven off the road by the driver of a pickup who was enraged by her "Support the Troops/Impeach Bush" bumper sticker.) I've written a zillion letters to the editor, but worried about yard signs, bumper stickers, anything that drew attention to my lonely vigil as a progressive democrat in a world full of madness.
And I wanted to tell Tim but never could really explain how angry it made me, the way that O'Reilly has slandered the progressive blogosphere, and even called this site a bunch of hate-mongers (sorry, no links on that - too many choices on google).
You see, I've never posted a serious diary before, but I've stalked the site for years now. It's my first stop on the web, and I have been reading it more and more deeply recently. And from the start it was a place to breathe, to find common cause, to read thoughtful journalism and essay-writing: a refuge.
That's what this little entry is about. Daily Kos has become a refuge for me. It was just a glimmer of hope I stumbled across as we started the mad drumbeats for war in '03. Everyone was crazy, nobody would listen, and all the MSM did was amplify the calls for Saddam's blood.
I had a handful of friends who agreed with me. At a New Year's Eve party at the end of '02, a friend suggested I get out front of some kind of local movement to stop the war. But I confess, I was afraid. The Bush Administration had demonstrated its willingness to use the levers of government to control the media, to target critics, and to marginalize people who spoke out. The submission of the Democratic Congress on the ATUF before the election was for me evidence that my country was lost, that I was isolated, that we were voiceless, powerless. I started to reread my college texts on the fall of the Roman Empire.
I was afraid. I was afraid of Dick Cheney and his band of apparatchiks. I was afraid of all of the arms of the federal government. I came of age as Nixon was leaving office, and I knew that Cheney was perfectly willing to turn the government inside-out to discomfort his political enemies.
To say it now is humiliating. But those of us with something to lose will always be the last to man the barricades. I was afraid. And that's where DailyKos came in. Here were these people willing to put themselves on the line, to speak out, to tell even a little bit of truth. That was the glimmer of light, the small chink in their armor.
At first, it was just a glimmer, but it inspired me to get involved in politics again. I poked my head out of my foxhole and started canvassing for candidates. In '04, my then-13-year-old son and I spent the last 4 days working for Kerry in Philadelphia. And I got attacked by a crazy old dog while canvassing in '06 for Kirsten Gillibrand in NY-20. I emerged into the full sunlight of a new political day.
Today we find ourselves at the front of a movement. There's a long long way to go, but our objective is clear. We seek real democracy, a new progressive world order, civil rights, intelligent governance. We are the change we seek, because Barack Obama and a 100-seat majority in the House and a filibuster-proof Senate all together will fall short if we stop. This movement that has comforted us in the hardest of hard times can help us realize a new future.
Thanks to all of you who helped me re-emerge from the dark. It has been a long journey, but not a lonely one.