Nobody cares what you think.... - Democratic Underground

bonzotex

(740 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Tue Apr-15-08 10:11 PM
Original message

Nobody cares what you think....

Nobody cares what you think.

I don’t write a lot of posts because plenty of smart people here usually cover what I might say before I can say it. I’ve been visiting here almost every day since shortly after DU began and have been a monthly $ contributor for years. Don’t let my low number of posts brand me as a DU newbie. I love this site. I love what good Democrats do here.

As the primary flame wars continue to new heights of stupidity, I’m going to try and write a variation of a post that many have written before.

People come to DU to discuss and argue politics - mostly. That’s cool. Allegedly it’s a Democratic Party partisan site to promote Democratic candidates and policies. Some of you may really feel you are making a difference with your latest 12 point rebuttal of someone else’s beliefs. Unfortunately, not many people will see it.

I got news for you, nobody cares. Nobody cares if you are a vegan, or a gun owner or Christian or an atheist gay or straight or other. Nobody cares how much you agonized during the primaries past and present. Nobody cares what campaign you worked for or gave money to. Nobody cares if you like Hillary or Obama. Nobody cares that you post here.

OK, relatively nobody. Maybe a few people do, but not enough to matter. Your endless back and forth flame war with some other DU poster certainly doesn’t matter. In October and November 2008, somewhere between 100 to 120 million American adults will give a shit enough to cast ballots for President and a whole long roster of important elected positions and local initiatives. It really, really matters to all of us and our Nation how this collection of partisan contests is resolved. Real people will die, be maimed, impoverished, imprisoned, tortured, spied on, abused, and marginalized in greater or lesser measure based in how we as a Nation vote in 2008.

As I write this, there are 118,842 user registrations on DU. Of course some of those are trolls, some never post or post lightly, some have written their “good bye cruel world” posts where they profess to never post here again because of some perceived injustice. Obviously some people visit and read and never sign in. Best case, there are a few hundred thousand that even know DU exists. Realistically, there are only a few thousand hard core DUers that come here often to read and sometimes post.

Let’s just say for a moment that by some miracle everyone on DU agreed exactly on the best candidate in every race nationwide. We can’t even vote as a block except for President and even then, if a 100 thousand of us vote in a 100 million citizen turnout we represent .001% of the vote. If every one of us gave a million dollars to our favorite candidates we still wouldn’t cover what will be spent Nation-wide in the various races.

Are we part of a larger Progressive/Liberal/Democrat blogosphere? Sure! But so what? The vast majority of America doesn’t pay attention to or even give a shit what we obsess over. The vast majority of Americans don’t read papers or watch network news every day, much less dive into the internet. Congratulations, you are part of the Elite! But nobody cares. The best rated TV cable news, Fox unfortunately, get around 2 million viewers a day. Rush gets about 2 million listeners to some part of his daily 3 hour bloviating. By contrast Kos gets around half a million visits a day. DU gets considerably less but if you want to be optimistic, roughly the same number of actual humans read liberal blogs as watch Fox news every day. The numbers go up and down. Have fun Googling the numbers. The fact remains that only about 10% of the voting population pays attention to political news on any given day. 3 million of our citizens are in jail for some reason or another. 80-100 million citizens won’t even vote. 12 million people are here illegally and can’t vote, but are affected by what we do.

The Liberal blogosphere is a bubble of sorts. If you live inside that bubble and think the rest of the world must see the same things you do then you are sadly mistaken.

90% of American voters don’t give a fuck what Hillary said about Obama today. 90% of American voters don’t give a fuck what Obama’s preacher said, ever. 90% of American voters don’t know what the most important news of the day is (whatever you may think that is). Tweety, Olberman, Russert and O’Reilly, Hannity and Rush can beat on a given silly topic for two weeks and 90% of the voters won’t have the slightest clue what the issue is. 90% of Americans couldn't’t tell you what States Senators McCain, Clinton and Obama represent. 68% of Americans believe in angels, 40% believe in Ghosts and 30% think George W. Bush is still doing a good job. 50% plus one of the electorate may still vote for McCain this year. I don’t care about the angels, ghosts, UFO or astrology beliefs because that generally won’t hurt many people, but a vote for McCain will.

When this 90% that doesn’t know or care what you think goes to vote, they will never have read your carefully crafted explanation of progressive taxation as a net social good. They will not have been swayed by your vicious flaming of some candidate’s foreign policy experience. They will not be eating less meat to fight global warming. They won’t be trading in their SUVs because you pointed out they look stupid driving them. They won’t have read a book by either Howard Zinn or Ann Coulter. They are going to vote emotionally, without a lot of reasoned thought, and to an extent, how their friends, coworkers, clerics and neighbors say they should.

As of 2004 in the U.S., 28% of the population over 25 had a bachelor’s degree or higher. That doesn’t mean 72% of the adults over 25 are stupid, but think about what that does mean. In 2003 about 16% of the U.S. population over 25 didn’t have a High School diploma or GED. (more women than men have both HS diplomas and up – go girls!) Most of these folks can vote. Very few give a shit how Rachel Maddow tore up that republican on MSNBC last Tuesday. They don’t know who James Carville or Mary Matalin are. They definitely don’t care what you think about how Hillary’s experiences as First Lady prepared her for leadership. They don’t care if Obama didn’t craft his San Francisco speech to properly sway white, rural, male, nativist gun owners in Pennsylvania.

75% of the US population allegedly has internet access in their homes. I’ll let you ponder what they are using it for. I’ll just guarantee you most of them aren’t visiting Democratic political sites to bone up on current events. Who is going to get them to vote Democratic? Hint: It won’t be the mass media.

Flame away, split hairs, argue semantics, cuss, spit bitch and moan, but come October (early and absentee voting) we have to start turning out warm bodies to cast Democratic ballots. Use this forum however you want to promote DEMOCRATIC candidates and ideals, but don’t expect anything to change or happen because you bitched about it here. Refine your knowledge and firm up your convictions, but you have to take that to the streets and keep the message simple. What are you going to do that will make some of that 90% care what you think?

What are you really going to do to turn out Democratic votes this year? If all you are going to do is bitch at other Democrats on sites like this, then piously proclaim you’ll sit the election out because your favorite Dem didn’t get the nod, then screw you. 2008? If you think the Republican or third party alternative will be better, then you are an idiot. Go poison some other website.

There’s not that many of us that care or pay attention. There’s not enough for us to fight each other over trifles. Nobody cares what you think. They will only pay attention to what you actually DO. A lot of us here want to DO things. We want to meet up, organize, register voters, promote Democratic candidates, direct money to worthy candidates, ensure a legitimate vote count, etc. We want do real and positive things, not tear each other up over political minutiae. Give it a shot. Be the neighbor, coworker or friend that opens someone’s eyes just enough. The people you need to reach aren’t on this website. They don’t care what you think because they don’t know.

Think about it before you waste time writing that next flame post or argue with some troll whose only goal is the argument itself.

Thanks for caring enough about what I may think to read this far. Carry On!