I just ponied up for the 2nd quarter fund drive, and I figured I would celebrate by explaining why.
I can't say that I got into DU on the ground floor; but I have been around for a long damn time. My first ever DU article was put up on July 21, 2001, so that's almost five years. And what years they've been.
When I first found out about Democratic Underground, I didn't know what was going to happen on September 11, 2001. All I knew was that American politics had just crossed through the looking glass. The world we're all trying to survive at this moment is so different from the world that existed in October of 2000, it's sometimes hard to remember that it wasn't always like this. It used to be that the worst thing you had to worry about during a presidential election was that your guy wouldn't win. Now, what worries me most is not knowing whether the results were legitimate or not. Tell me now, really--before 2000, did you
ever think that you would spend a lot of your November wondering who the president was, or watch a man sworn in as President of the United States after losing the popular vote, or watch the same man sworn in again four years later and wonder whether he stole it again this time or whether his gang of political assassins had simply told enough lies and bribed enough media outlets to swing it his way? I didn't. I also didn't think I'd ever see a major terrorist attack on American soil. Nor did I think I would live through
another war with Iraq that would last several years and be a thousand times worse for both sides than the first one had been. And if you'd told me in 1999 how Hurricane Katrina would go down, I'd have said you were crazy.
This is a brand new world we live in, my friends, and it takes some adjusting. And while the world is remade, those of us who realize what a horror it is have been systematically shut out of the country that most of us call home. Our Congressional leaders are basically hostages to the Republican majority, and frequently appear to be identifying with their captors. We have no idea whether our votes actually count. The fantasists in the White House have been so successful at capturing the media that reality only gets into the black box as reflected in the funhouse mirror of The Daily Show. Our phone calls are available to the National Security Agency. They're about to install the general who masterminded that plan as head of the CIA. It can all start to become overwhelming. There are only two things that help, really: community, and activism. And DU is my starting place for both.
It has been incredibly valuable to me in so many ways that I can't list them all. The one I keep coming back to is community. We really,
really need to be able to talk to each other, and for all the bullshit and the flaming and the primary fights this place has been a godsend to me for that reason. No matter who you are you can find people on DU who speak your language, and, bar the trolls and the psychotics, they're all good people.
We've been through the war together. I guess that's what it comes down to. We've seen a lot of tragedy in terms of human life (September 11, Shock and Awe, Katrina...) and in terms of politics (the 2004 election, the Alito confirmation, etc. etc. etc.). There have also been some personal tragedies. Since I joined, I've been to one
DU funeral and had
a DU friend die of necrotizing fasciitis. But there have also been weddings, births, soldiers coming home--and now, even on the political front, some good news. How I long for our next Fitzmas Day, when Rove finally gets about 1/1,000,000,000th of what's coming to him. And when it happens, I'll come here to celebrate.
After Khephra died, I wrote
this up as a way of explaining what DU is and why it matters. Here's part of it:
It has always been one of my pet theories that the foundation of ethics is imagination. You cannot always see and touch the people that one of your actions might hurt; you have to be able to imagine them. Meeting people through the Web involves the same kind of faith; you believe in them even though you can't see or touch them. Approached in the right spirit and used with the right intentions, the anonymity of the internet can help train us to do the most important thing we can possibly learn, which is to consider, understand, and respect the rights and feelings of people who are not physically present to us and who are not--at least as far as we know--part of whatever we consider our tribe. When people talk about Khephra as being a pillar of this community, it seems to me like what they're saying is that he was able to make online interaction good for people, even at times when the rest of us often yielded to the temptation to fire up the flamethrower and toast away.
The loss of the ability to care about imaginary people is, from what I can tell, what has allowed our countrymen to accept the Iraq war, and many of the other abominations this administration has perpetrated. At its best, DU nurtures that ability, by helping us care for each other as well as acting on behalf of all the people who are being hurt by the goons who run our country.I used to give back through my writing, but I don't have as much time do that any more as I used to. So, instead, I'm giving cash this year. I want DU around for a long damn time, because it's going to be a long damn time before the real world is a place we can live in 24/7.
Dig deep and give, my brethren and sistren,
The Plaid Adder
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