Don't say "at the beginning," because I am grumpy far beyond my years.
Hello DailyKos, pleased to meet you. Call me Quellist. I've been reading DailyKos for... years now. A decade or more, it seems. Never joined, until now (well, a few days ago). Never considered writing a diary here, until the day I joined. Then a funny thing happened. Or odd. Hard to tell, really.
I suppose I'm not making sense so I shall attempt to explain. I watched a YouTube video today, that I arrived at via a diary by Russgirl ( http://www.dailykos.com/... ). Oh, and Russgirl, thank you. Good song, always loved Blue Rodeo, Lost Together has me tearing up every time. I am in your debt for pointing me to it.
Anyways... I did something I don't believe I have ever done before. I went down through the comments on the youtube video, upvoting insightful comments and downvoting the obvious trolls and astroturfers. I don't know why, except that I loathe Stephen Harper with a hate most people usually reserve for abstract concepts like "needless suffering" or "negligent genocide". He is, and I speak with utter conviction, Evil. The most evil man I have ever seen in person. I despise him enough to hold my nose and vote for anyone rather than see the Conservative Alliance form another government under him. If Caligula and Cthulhu were his two opponents, I would have to think long and hard about whether I mind there being ANOTHER horse in the Senate, or Star Spawn filling all those cabinet posts.
ahem.
Getting sidetracked. I do that a lot. Back to topic.
As I was reading through hundreds of positive, congratulatory or thankful comments interspersed with the usual trollish astroturf and some of what I can only assume was honest vitriol, I found something I never expected to find.
A reasonable Conservative.
His comment was polite, it was rational, it was intelligent. I did not agree with it, but it was neither hateful nor untrue.
And so I did something I have not done for... years. At least three or four years. As an aside, I gave up reading Canadian progressive blogs about that time, because Harper's last election win just took the heart out of me.
What did I do? I engaged with this Conservative. Politely. Or as politely as I could. I am not a saint. I am, in fact, a very angry man. A lifelong disappointed idealist who embraced cynicism young and who has never managed to completely shake his pessimism. But I do generally try to be civil. Most especially I try to return politeness in kind. Compassion and Empathy are two of the best tools progressives have, because they are so rare on the other side. Some see it as weakness. Hell, I see it as weakness in my more frustrated moments. I admit, I am at heart a tyrant and a monster (I am also thankful for my lack of power, money and influence to indulge those baser emotions)... but I can at least see that in myself and imagine myself better. In those moments I see weakness in kindness I am wrong. Compassion and Empathy are indispensable. We need them more each day.
So I commented back and forth with this gentleman, and I think that in some way, shape or form I managed to reach him. At the very least, I left him thinking. I know our conversation certainly left me thinking. With more energy than I have had in months (enough that before dinner I finally started reading the Martian and kept going until I finished it).
I don't know if I have changed his mind. Honestly I doubt it, but I managed to communicate with him in spite of our disagreement. In the long run, maybe that will make a difference to him? I know that it has made a difference to me.
Small victories, right?