Reply #153: I agree with part of what you say

[nam78_two]

But: 1) I don't think DU is the best guage of someone's offline activism. A lot of people treat it as a venting forum or even entertainment.
2) You cannot assume that a lot of people who might have been interested in what you were suggesting, including the people you perceive as complainers, even saw the thread. It is sad but controversial topics tend to get much more floor time than mundane yet important stuff. A very prolific poster here who jumps into every controversial topic once said he viewed DU as 2 steps above graffiti on a bathroom wall or something like that-explained a lot about his posts. But people like that can sit here and post 5 topics a minute and kicking them themselves-they probably don't even care in the slightest about what they post but it is fun to them.


I do understand part of what you are saying regarding the effort involved in actually pushing through legilation, getting candidates elected, getting things done locally etc. I have worked as a volunteer for the Democratic party for the last two elections (I turned 20 in 2000 and wasn't into party politics much at the time) and I have been volunteering for environmental/animal groups much longer and the political and issue groups just seem like very different animals to me. Though even within the latter group there are the groups that go with the less flashy more pain-staking route. I am ambivalent about it all really. But, I can see how people who sign up to go the route you did can find the complaints of what you perceive as purely keyboard warriors childish or annoying. I would tend to agree if ALL they did was moan about it on DU. But if you are talking purely in terms of the overall contribution to any movement, I think both categories are important-the more radical activists pushing for immediate change as well as the by-the-book patient people who are working the system so to speak. Imagine if there were no "radical lefties" left-I shudder to think of how much more right wing this country (in terms of attitudes if nothing else) would be-there is a value to putting out ideas or memes that are largely absent from public discourse.

As for the "netroots"-I think that they are going to be a much larger political influence in the future than they are now. Many of the people I have seen at the city hall meetings etc. are much older than I am and a fair segment of them consist of people like my mom, who only use their computers for online Scrabble. But, I think as my peers get more politically active, you would see a spike in the no. of people who are active on and off line.

Hmmm I am not sure if that made much sense-I am not much of a keyboard warrior for this reason- am not particularly coherent or articulate ;).