In pursuit of the truth, what road do you take?

[kentuck]

This was what brought me to DU in the first place. There was little truth being exposed after the Supreme Court put George w Bush into power. Lies and propaganda and cover-ups ruled the day.

That was a time when DUer's were referred to as the "ten-percenters". We were the 10 percent disagreeing with Bush's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But we endured. We were proven to be right much more often than we were wrong.

DU, in its early days, was a place for honest and frank discussions. Dishonest discussions were quickly discovered and thrown out on their asses. There was much less leniency for questionable conservative positions, which we had already heard until our stomachs had turned. Today, there seems to be more tolerance for these suspect positions.

There are many places to get stories and facts but they are seldom deeply explored for the truth. Most sites, like HuffingtonPost for example, have discussion boards, but they move so quickly and they are open to every partisan position, which, in the end, it balances out to nothing said and nothing heard. They do little to get to the truth.

This has been the area where DU has excelled. DUer's take the information from places like the NYTimes, the HuffingtonPost, DailyKos, and many, many others and discuss them down to a gnat's ass. In the end, DUers usually come to a consensus. Bullshit is exposed as well as the truth. It was necessary, in the beginning, to block out the conservative propaganda which had taken over our entire country. We had to work around those that kept infiltrating the site with the same tired bullshit.

Times have changed. We now have people like Rachel Maddow, Keith Olberman, Ed Shultz, Dylan Ratigan, and several other progressive voices that we did not have back then. We also now have the first black President. We elected a large Democratic majority to the House and Senate. We have made great progress in many ways. However, the pursuit of the truth continues.

We see now the influence of money on politicians and politics in general. It crosses Party lines and runs counter to the interests of the people. This is a truth that we must address. In the end, the truth is more important than any Party affiliation. Let's not be deterred by slick counter-arguments that serve no purpose other than to confuse folks. A good example is the argument to let suspected terrorists buy guns but deny them every other right that applies to common citizenry.

Many people in Washington and nationwide know about the DemocraticUnderground. Just ask Rush Limbaugh. Ask Robert Byrd. Ask Helen Thomas. Ask Barbara Boxer. They may not want to talk about the "underground" but they know about it. We could read about the oil spill, the bomber in Times Square, the stock market collapse, etc, and we would know what we have read. However, only by deep discussion and exploration of the facts can the truth be known. That is where DU has excelled. The pursuit continues.


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