On the eve of this election, there's something I need your help to understand [View all]

[WilliamPitt]

Tomorrow, everyone of voting age in my family will troop down to our polling station and vote en masse to eject Scott "Please Just Go Away Already" Brown over the treeline and into the ether. This is not special, or unique, or dramatic. This is standard; we vote, period and end of file.

I imagine 99.99983% of every participant on this board is the same way: you vote, period and end of file.

So here's the thing that has been vexing me for a while now.

From the day of its inception until the day George W. Bush finally vacated the office he never won in the first place, DU was flypaper for liberals and progressives, and deliberately so. Among the attributes most clearly cherished were a demand for fair and open elections, a love of the Constitution and the rule of law, a desire to stop unjust or unwise wars, a desire to protect and defend the environment, and a desire to bring the criminals in government and Wall Street to justice.

That's the short list of the viewpoints actively cultivated for eight full years here. Eight. Full. Years.

Nowadays, however, because some politicians with a (D) after their names aren't, don't or won't stand for some or all of those ideals, pointing that out here and criticizing it has become some sort of high crime. If we do criticize those (D) politicians for failing to live up to those ideals, we're called "ratfuckers" or "trolls," or accused of "trying to depress turnout," or of having "Obama Derangement Syndrome," etc., because OMG REPUBLICANS YOU GUYS.

Are we really that chickenshit that we can't discuss and debate these serious issues, and whether our (D)'s are living up to them? P.S. If you think being critical on DU is going to swing even one election tomorrow, I strongly suggest you push away from the keyboard and go get some fresh air.

It gives me whiplash. We were for all those things for 2,922 days, until a guy with a (D) after his name took the Oval, and now we get dunned for standing up for the principles that were the bedrock of this community since January of 2001.

Don't call me a "ratfucker." Don't tell me I'm depressing turnout; if you want to find me tomorrow afternoon, look for the guy with the ponytail and beard holding a sign on Main Street, and that's after I vote.

We stand for these things or we don't. We stand up for them or we don't. We used to, en masse. Now, if there's a (D) involved, doing so is a crime to a whole lot of people around here. As far as I am concerned, *that* right there is Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Explain it to me.