I haven't posted anything here since the 2004 election, which basically slaughtered my faith in politics.  The day yesterday reminded me of 2004, when there was just the feeling that Kerry would pull it out and it was supremely puzzling that the polls and the results didn't match.  The day dragged on, getting worse by the hour.  In 2004, I felt I'd spent too much time reading the thoughts of believers, while not understanding how anyone in hell could support the other guy.  I had to abandon this place for a while as a result.  I'll mention that this doesn't hurt nearly as much as 2004 because Clinton by no means equals Bush, but it’s a disappointment.

There seems to be a serious conservative streak on  Daily Kos that discounts anything related to esoteric belief.  "Tin foil hat" has been thrown around far too often.  The term "reality based community" seems ill-placed in a progressive movement--as if reality is exactly what we see.  This may be a scientific age but there is a lot more we don't know than we do know--every new discovery rewrites old discoveries.  We quite possibly live in a multi-dimensional universe.  I don't want to lecture on string theory and quantum physics, but there's a whole lot more going on to "reality" than the "reality based community" likes to believe.

I found this interview posted on Drudge.  He has a tendency to put a negative spin on stories which actually reflect well on Kerry if you read the whole story.  He does the same thing with Teresa today.

Rolling Stone  

One nugget:

The issue of 5 times the experience should be repeated like a mantra.

Why oh why isn't Kerry talking about the Fear issue.  I keep waiting and waiting, now impatiently.  Are you afraid all of the time?  Let's change that.  If we fear all the time, the terrorists have won.  

I read an interesting blog piece that suggested America's relationship with Bush is like a bad romance.  (I don't remember where, I surf too much.)  Once Kerry is elected, people will think, Holy shit, that was bad.  I had no idea how unhappy I was until I was out of the relationship.  

I know it's difficult to campaign against a "mood" but Bush has fucked up the very ether of America.  Hope and benevolence are quickly dying.  Fear is the new American Dream.  Fear is worse than hate--it can make good people do bad things in a knee-jerk response, unlike hate which is built over time.  

(a little more...)

It started slowly.  I checked out the threads on Kos' main page.  Then I got myself an I.D. and started making comments of my own.  At first I ignored readers' diaries.  I didn't want to become too entrenched in the site.

Then a bad--and very good--thing happened.  Kerry said something that Zackpunk had written on Kos.  Holy shit, what you write here could actually make it into the Presidential campaign.  Kerry might be reading Kos himself.  This was the worst thing that could have happened to me.  It made Kos potentially world-changing, the epicenter of the left, not just a place where people come and talk politics.  

Soon I was reading new diaries one after another.  I built up a diary watchlist.  I found myself refreshing the page to see if a new diary came up.  I'm sorry if this is hard on the server.  This site has made a junkie out of me.  Now I'm a full-blown addict, I can't quit reading the stuff here.  It's very comforting to read the diaries of hundreds upon hundreds of people who think in a similar way.  I get a little jolt of pride every time someone's given me a good mojo rating or someone comments on something I've written.

(more self-obsession...)