A small disclaimer, this was written a couple of days ago when the Rec list was really a wreck list and it seemed quite a few of us were pretty fed up with what was floating around. Before the President made his speech Wednesday night, before the substantive diaries began populating the List and before yesterday's Morning Feature
where we had over 400 comments, (JanF will probably fill us in on what jotter had to say about it), the full gamut of opinions with lots of people in various stages of gruntlement and still not a falme in sight. I was very proud of us.
That said, follow me over the jump, if you will, and back in time a couple of days for a little ranting...
C’mon people, wake up and get a grip instead of a gripe. It’s like we elected a president and have nothing left to do but run around, hair on fire, because we worked our butts off getting Obama in office and then expected to be able to sit back and let him carry the load for 8 years while we went back to our little lives and our personal concerns.
I look around and see the same sort of purity trolling that the conservatives are imploding the Republican party with and frankly, A) it’s not a great model to follow, and B) we should know better. We keep making fun of the conservatives for doing it and pointing out the obvious conclusions, let’s not forget the model is valid on our side of the aisle, too. And I see substantive diaries being ignored, orphaned, because everyone’s piling on the latest hair on fire dia(tribe)ry on the wreck list. Focus, people.
I know we’ve had, and set, bad examples the last few years and we’re rusty as hell because the last time we were really out and doing our work as citizens en masse was decades ago, but we need to remember how to do that and get off our collective butts and reverse the trend. Deoliver47 wrote a diary last week on coalition building that didn’t get nearly enough attention and she outlines what we’ve forgotten or were too young to know. Invest your time in your community and your government. Get out and run for school board, county supervisor, anything, but get up and out there and away from the navel gazing and pathetic sniping that we’re wasting so much time and energy on here on DKos and get out into the real world and keep up the momentum for grass roots change.
Civilization is a constant fight against entropy, if we want civilization, we have to row our boat against the current that carries everything into disorder. That current doesn’t ever stop, but it’s possible to attain a range of balance and to do that requires that we all take shifts on the oars. We’re supposed to be about electing more and better democrats, let’s find and cultivate those instead of posting reactionary diaries compounding the rampant outrage du jour.
The conservatives and evangelicals looked around at the trends in the late 70’s and realized they were about to lose big and needed leverage, so they sowed their seeds starting in the 80’s and it’s borne fruit. They infiltrated school boards and we now have entire states leaping decades backwards and openly, unabashedly denouncing things as fundamental and proven as 150 year old Darwinian principles, and questioning the very foundations of science and rationality. Those types LIKED the Dark Ages and the religious wars endemic to that ignorance and are perfectly happy to drag the rest of us back there along with them if we stand by and allow it. And we have been. They have to kill science and reality based, fact based arguments because they can’t compete with them. When science and rationality are dead then everything is just opinion and theirs is as valid as anyone’s because all it requires is belief and volume rather than proof. [Not like we’ve been seeing any of that volume based ‘persuasion’ around here lately ::snark::] We have to fight back, in small and consistent ways, on a regular basis. And keep it up. Tag someone else and take a breather, tag back in when you’re rested.
We’re looking at a big organizational chasm that we’ve allowed to open by opting out over the years. And it isn’t going to get better if we sit around and whine about it or tear at each other. Our current idiots aren’t just going to disappear from our local politics, they’re going to aggregate, move up into bigger leagues and keep pushing their knotheaded crap as long as we’re all sitting around here writing and fussing instead of being out where the rubber meets the road doing the grunt work of democracy. We’ve let it go too long and it’s going to take a lot more work now to get it all back on track. A lot more work because we abandoned the field and allowed the idiots to plant their seeds and harvest several crops of stupid while we were wringing our hands and waiting for people to come to their senses.
Instead of writing hair on fire diaries here, write constructive letters to the editors of your local papers, pointing out the obvious over and over so that the stupid no longer goes unanswered and becomes the common wisdom by default. You’re not going to change the alleged minds of the nutcases, but you will cut down their recruitment by showing those who read and can be persuaded that there is a reasonable alternative. They’re the ones we have to reach and bring in to work, (and vote), with us. Be the sane voice of reason among the wingnuts commenting on local issues. Bring your friends. Have bake sales for schools and the art and music programs that are being cut. Art and expression are progressive, their lack is our lack in the years to come. Explain to the nearest wingnut that, like evolution, gravitation is also ‘just’ a theory but we’re pretty sure it exists and works, too.
Letting entropy win and run things into the ground is easy, neocons have been doing it and advocating it for decades. But we’ve gotten better at it, too. Governing is hard and messy, with consequences, but it needs to be done if we’re in it for the long haul, and we are, like it or not. We need to manage and stay ahead of all the degradation that will happen, that would happen just from the passage of time even if there wasn’t climate change to factor in. Sewer systems get outdated by decades, roads are potholed and inefficient, bridges collapse, all that is supposed to be what the government attends to. Looking to the future, planning for it, testing approaches and implementing the plans is GOVERNING. The neocons are crap at it, and we’d better remember how to be better because it’s about to hit a tipping point and cause cascade failures right down the line. To make it more critical, we’ve got not only the mass of what we’ve neglected, but the additional factors of climate change, that we’re still trying to assess, to figure in and get out in front of, too.
Democracy is work and we’re out of shape. Start small, with a few reps, a few laps, but we have to work up and get back up to speed, because the stupid breeds faster than enlightenment does. Enlightenment requires foundation, stupid just oozes out across the landscape and takes over. We’re working against entropy, the weeds take over productive fields if the weeding isn’t done, and not only have we not been doing the weeding, we’ve allowed others to sow crops that we knew were going to be pernicious and pervasive. Many hands=lighter work. Take turns, spell each other. Support those who are currently in the trenches. Get off DKos more and out into the real world and start laying the foundation for tomorrow, ‘cause it’s coming anyway.