Get Thee Behind Me, Eeyores
by SusanG
Thu May 04, 2006 at 10:19:09 AM PDT
You know the ones I'm talking about: the Diebold fatalists, the gloomy donkeys who greet every piece of positive Democratic news with the refrain: It doesn't matter. The elections will be rigged. And then they go on for 50 comments to chase their lost tail and sigh and tell everyone on the thread (no matter what the topic is, no matter how unrelated it is to physical act of voting) how utterly hopeless the entire electoral process is.
I always wonder: What are you even doing here if you're completely convinced every facet of casting a vote is predetermined? Why invest the time? Daily Kos is, first and foremost, a site about the mechanics and strategy of getting progressives to the polls and winning campaigns. If elections are unwinnable, why not find an anarchist website? Or take up organic gardening or bird watching or jazzercise? At the very least, you'd be healthier and disinvested in what you view as a lost cause.
Perhaps some people just see their role in life as being the political equivalent of a buzzkill.
Please note: I'm not referring to the activists who have serious doubts about touchscreen voting and are signing petitions, volunteering as poll watchers on election day, contacting their state and local representatives about getting a paper trail mandated in their area. These people are heroes, and are doing valid and necessary work in the political process. They are not sitting on their asses predicting certain electoral defeat and resigning themselves to the luxury of feeling victimized and powerless until the solar system burns itself out.
But there is a small subset of people here who are not doing a damn thing except injecting themselves into every unrelated post and conversation to inform us all that we're doomed ... doomed ... DOOMED, I tell you, unto the seventh generation to suffer Rovian-rigged protofacism in Amerika and that we all might as well just go lay our heads on a block on the White House lawn and hand Ken Mehlman an axe and be done with it.
Enough. Enough, I say.
I have a simple request: Please, gather together in one or two or five diaries a day and lament how diabolically (or Dieboldolically) lost the cause is. Keep all the toxic miasma pooled in just a few clearly marked cesspools and leave the rest of us alone.
See, the year is 2006 and we're trying to win an election here, hopeless as that may seem to the Eeyores.
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