(WARNING: This diary is a critical criticism of what happens on DailyKos from time to time. Parts of it are clearly lifted from another, unnamed diary, the changed words in bold, so that it can be seen how empty the original message really is)
It has become the popular thing, with random people.
Find a friendly online audience, then tell that audience what they want to hear. Convey to the audience fighting words and strong rhetoric, insult what you perceive as your enemy--a vague, ill-formed "ism" representing thousands of people--and offer nothing of counter-balance, just empty criticism.
Then suck up all the "feel-good" responses as the audience reacts to your celebrity and beats whatever drum you've hauled out, while praising you for making them feel good...about you doing, in reality, nothing.
Well, I've had enough of it. And from the small percentage of comment's I've read on this site, I'm not alone.
I like to hear from people who think like me, I really do. But I've become weary of the constant posturing without action, the endless hand-wringing, and the outright duplicity of it.
Allow me to quote myself commenting throughout the years:"
You're fed up? Is that what you call it, Random People? Had enough? Funny, for the most part over the past 5 years, you Random Kossacks have basically drawn a dotted line across your own mouths with a tag that read, "Unzip to release vitriol."
I think it is galling for you to speak of your efforts as "fighting." While I do appreciate your perspective from the outside, I cannot thank you for your rather weak approach to this fight.
What happened to grassroots action and community support? Coming on Daily Kos and telling us all how you are "fed up" is not really the forum you should choose, if you have truly had enough, is it? Isn't it kind of like Dick Cheney choosing Fox News for going public about the shooting?
How about this: How about actually fighting with some substance. How about taking real, meaningful action, instead of coming to liberal sites to insult the opposition and your own leaders.
Show me something first. THEN tell me all about it...otherwise it becomes increasingly clear that Random People are acting from the perspective of personal self-promotion, and not from any true sense of duty to the American political process.
Folks, let's take a good, hard look at what we have here, and I'm abbreviating my litany of complaints because everyone here knows what they are, and so do our Democratic leaders:
- We have a significant minority in the most corrupt congress in history, with big business running the government and corporate interests taking precedent.
- We have a bunch of Republican initiatives running that have been a part of the machine since well before the 2000 Election.
- We have a bunch of liberal websites thinking that they have more power than they have actually accomplished yet, repeatedly shunning away the first window into real power they actually have, all in the name of self-aggrandizing, self-promoting, and the real potential of achieving staggering impotence.
...
There's plenty more where that came from, but its important to note that there are better things to do than complain about what we dislike in the world and pass the blame onto the very people who are working to change it.
I'm not saying that it's wrong to demand more from your representatives--certainly not. And I'm definitely not saying that all Democrats are perfect. But this diary illustrates a crucial difference between "talking the talk" and "walking the walk."
Taking action is NOT writing a vaccuous, self-serving, depricitous diary.
From empty calls to "stop helping Democrats do nothing" to the disheartening message to Ms. Pelosi talking about "doing nothing" while offering no suggestions outside of an elitist "get off my website" message which, in reality, is saying "please do even less than I perceive you are doing."
This callous criticism with nothing to offer sounds a bit too much like a Republican saying that he's "looking forward to working with our Democratic friends" in Congress: backhanded and trite.
Unfortunately anyone can say "this sucks and I want things to be better!" but its quite a different thing to start working.
I've seen people do everything from promoting petitions and letter writing campaigns, to designing software, for crissake, and get less attention and support than most pieces of ranting drivel.
Let's work together to make a change, not just point out each other's failures.