I am not the most eloquent writer by any measure, and as such, I will spare you my attempt at trying to be transcendent. I will say that I am very proud to have been a part of this historic moment. This is a moment that will forever be remembered for its cultural importance, emotional commitment, and inspirational impact. Barack Obama, spurred on by the dedication of millions of Americans and their desire for something better, proved that Hope is alive and well.
There are a number of great observations and opinions resulting from the election. One is from an e-mail that a reader sent to Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic, which he posted on his blog this morning.
“Nothing in my life has actually changed in the 30 minutes since it was announced Obama will be our next president. I have the same bills, the same amount of money in the bank, my dishwasher is still broken, and my 5 month old beagle won't stop peeing on my carpet. Everything in my life is exactly the same as it was 30 minutes ago; and yet I feel as though everything is different.
I feel so much hope. I feel so much pride. I feel like my one vote was a single drop of water in a great Tsunami of change. I feel like I was one of a million voices screaming in the night, " I love my country and I'm taking it back!" I'm so proud of the country that I love and have so much hope in my heart that we can together heal the wounds that have been such a source of pain and anger to us all.
I know Obama isn't going to fix the economy overnight, I know he won't be able to provide healthcare to all Americans by February '09. I know Obama isn't a Messiah who four years from now will have turned this country into a fabled utopia. But I also know Obama will make moral decisions. I know Obama will try to unite where others try to divide. I know Obama will help to make America the beacon of hope it once was to others. I know that at 27 years of age, I witnessed one of the most important and hopefully glorious chapters in American history.
I know hope.”
As David Kurtz of TalkingPointsMemo said yesterday before the polls closed, “Today is neither the beginning nor the end, but just an important landmark along the way.” He was absolutely right. The world did not end yesterday when Barack Obama was elected President, as some had predicted, nor is this the Birth of a New Nation, as others have claimed. It is a definite sign that we are moving forward, but we have a very long way to go. I had hoped that Proposition 8 would be rejected by California voters, but that did not happen. That is just one sign of many that we still have a hard climb to become a country free from prejudices. It was refreshing, though, to see deep red South Dakota respect the right of women to make their own choices with respect to a sometimes crucial medical decision.
Through the course of this campaign, wounds thought closed had the bandage rip away by divisive politics, and my personal excitement was momentarily hit this morning as I overheard two gentlemen expressing disbelief that “they elected that nigger.” I chose the high road and kept my mouth shut, hopeful that in time, these feelings of hatred will pass, eventually.
But even as the election is now over, the disastrous Bush Presidency is not. The last eight years have left scars on our country that will take generations to heal. We have likely not seen some of the worst atrocities committed by power-mad politicians, and I am scared that we have not yet seen the last of them. Bush is still the president, for good or ill, and there are reports that his administration is working overtime to enact even more destructive policies before they leave office in January. Millions of acres of federally-protected lands could be opened to oil exploration in a matter of weeks, an apparent parting gift to friends on the Oil Industry. Civil Liberties may be further eroded by ignoring regulations placed upon the Department of Homeland Security, allowing the administration to view and edit reports of privacy violations and abuses of power. “Improved” FBI guidelines, quietly released by Attorney General Michael Mukasy last month, broaden the powers of investigators beyond reasonable limits. One star figure of the campaign, William Ayers, is a free man today despite his own admission of horrendous crimes because investigators overstepped their legal boundaries with the COINTELPRO program. Under the new FBI guidelines, they can legally overstep many of these same boundaries meant to protect innocent civilians. Add these to the countless “signing statements” and undisclosed reports, along with a litany of other items we may never know of, and many more that could happen in the coming weeks. Bush has fifteen more days to make rule changes that are deemed “economically significant,” and until the 20th of December to issue other rule changes. Let us also not forget the traditional pardons given in the waning days of power. It very well could be that Senator Ted Stevens not only wins his reelection campaign, but is also pardoned of his crimes.
Even with all the positives that I believe will come from this election, there are absolutely a wealth of negatives. The Republican Party is in ruins. This was such a decisive defeat that even they themselves admit a need for broad, sweeping change. As Democrats beat republicans in Senate and House seats, the remaining GOP positions are primarily held by hard-line conservatives in hard-line areas. Centrists and Moderates are already beginning to embrace the ideas put forth by Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, helping to harden the small but strong Republican base. Following a long period of divisive partisan politics, the bunker reaction of aggressive GOP individuals will not lead to overwhelming national unity. Hopefully, though, there will be enough of a move to the middle that corresponding hard-line approaches will be countered.
This should also come as a warning to those of us that worked tirelessly to get Barack Obama and our local Democrats elected. Hopefully we will learn from the mistakes of Karl Rove, and build a positive relationship with our political opponents. Despite the outstanding margin of victory, we cannot allow the opinions on the Right to be ignored. We can work together and improve the country, recover our standing abroad, and improve the quality of life for millions here and in other countries. But not if we aren’t willing to work together.
Yes we can.
Thank you for your time in reading this. That will be all for me. Be well.
-CTD
More tomorrow, but for tonight, I would like to thank everyone, even those who didn't vote for Obama, for going out and letting your votes be counted. This is truly a moment of history.
Tomorrow, those of us who have not taken advantage of early voting will go to the polls and cast our vote for the presidential candidate of our choice. If you have not yet voted, please do so. I am certain that at least one of you will vote for the candidate that I am voting against, but I still implore you to let your vote be counted. People always give the flippant excuse that, “my one vote doesn’t count.” But really, your vote counts just as much as you would like for it to count. If you truly don’t believe your vote counts, and you aren’t willing to be an active participant in the electoral process, so be it. If you are interested in supporting your candidate, whomever it may be, and you are willing to put in as little time as it takes to voice your opinion to your friends, your vote won’t matter as much as your neighbor who was willing to join into the process.
But now, on the eve of Election Day, we’ve nearly run out of time to sway anyone’s opinion one way or the other. I won’t bother trying to sway your opinion now.
However, I do think I am justified in making a few statements concerning the campaigns that were run. I got involved. I donated to my candidate. I shared my opinions with others, in person and over the phone.
This has been the most divisive campaign that I have ever witnessed in my short life. This went above and beyond a popularity contest, and came in far below a contest based on qualifications. Over the last few months, I have watched as pundits and candidates have pitted neighbor against neighbor for the most detrimental of reasons. It seems that every third person in this country must now be a “terrorist,” based upon the loose and hate-filled reasons for applying that label. I have witnessed a man for whom I once had great respect abandon his honor and honesty in an attempt to win an election. I have witnessed the sad regression that many Americans have made, as they demonize the entire Islam faith. I have grown tired of comparisons to Nazis, or Socialists, or Communists.
I have heard the word Nigger said and screamed, both by people I don’t know, and people I had previously respected.
I had believed that the shape of our country couldn’t get much worse. I believed that Bush’s disastrous policies had finally managed to bottom us out, and we were poised for a rebound. Instead, we found a new low. No longer were we worried about the “terrorists” in other countries, we were suddenly told that this person and that person were terrorists, and anyone with skin a shade darker was potentially a Manchurian plant.
Despite the outcome of the election, I do hope that we will at least manage to close this horrible chapter of our history. Nobody can fix this country on their own, but hopefully when the election is over, and no longer are people telling us to hate this person and that, we can begin to fix ourselves. I do still have hope that we are not as hateful a country as we have appeared lately. Only time will tell, and perhaps that time will begin soon.
Please, if you haven’t yet done so, go out and vote tomorrow.
I hope you are well.
-CTD
The good folks at SixApart can breathe a little easier today. I am leaving.
On January 21st, Team Vox wrote their highly-informative We are listening post. Our collective disgust with Release 41 was tempered, and we were inspired to keep hoping that things would be fixed.
Today is February 21st.
I understand that changes take time, but I have waited longer than I had intended. I didn't expect things to go back to normal instantly, but I did think that perhaps some of the most hated changes would be corrected quickly. I know that you can never please everyone, and I realize that some people will always be upset with change. I had foolishly believed that the cries of the masses would have resulted in at least fixing the most upsetting issues. Everyone makes mistakes. Microsoft extended their support period for Windows XP after the yawn of discontent over Vista. Facebook fixed their highly-intrusive Beacon program after the massive user backlash. We've been waiting for Vox to take the lead. No website is perfect, but the good ones go the extra mile to keep the users happy. Remember, even Google failed at Social Networking.
I know I'm not the first to leave, and I most certainly won't be the last. Vox will continue without me, just as they have continued without the others that left, whether quietly or with much fanfare. The band will continue to play, but I'm tired of rearranging the deck chairs.
I would love to believe that we are all going to keep in touch, but in reality this post is more like a fairweather friend signing your Senior Yearbook. Take care. I will miss you guys.
And I would like to thank Miss Scotch for my newest, and final, Vox tag: Release 41 ruined Vox.
(I do, however, reserve the right to post in the future, should some projected circumstances pan out)
Who or what do you really love?
Happy FTD and Hallmark Day everyone. Since the topic of this QotD is "love," I felt inclined to share a bit from quite possibly my favorite book of all time, The Rum Diary, by Hunter S. Thompson.
"Happy," I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words, like Love, that I have never quite understood. Most people who deal in words don't have much faith in them and I am no exception - especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because they're scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence.
I find that part pretty interesting, for a number of reasons. In my office, I have a large sheet of metal hanging on the wall, aptly titled the "Fluff Board." On this board is a collection of magnets on which are printed countless superlatives. It's basically a Magnetic Poetry kit for marketing, if such a kit existed (it may now, but there was no such kit when I first made the board). It's filled with words meant to evoke emotion of some fashion, or find some way to grasp the reader. Imagine, although passe, is on there, along with words like embrace, solace, paradise, escape, and others that, when used properly, work to make the reader believe that whatever is being sold can instantly turn their frown upside down, and revert the pear-shape of their day. And if my numbers are any indication, it certainly works.
It's truly an absurd thing, but when you think about it and take a look around, it's certainly not groundbreaking. If you consider professions that in reality create nothing concrete and deal mainly in words, you could pretty much get the same result by giving a Mad Libs book to a monkey. Think of movie reviews, and how often you see "riveting" or "a must-see." We're not inventing new words, but rather putting the same words in different order.
Okay, maybe it's not exactly that simple, but it's damn close. I mentioned this Fluff Board to a client once (after countless drinks at a lunch meeting), and he immediately insisted that I make one for him filled with business buzzwords. I told him to get me a list of words he wanted (I spent about three weeks putting together my original fluff list, and I add words constantly), and I had a metalworker friend make it all fancy. Now, when he talks to investors or even his executive staff, I'm sure he uses that board to try to rally the troops. My partner has a similar board in his office, but it's filled with marketing buzzwords. I can't stand to even think of some of the words on that damn board, but he seems to live by it.
We are wordsmiths. Like I said, we create nothing new, we just rearrange the words in the global lexicon. So as you are getting ready to cuddle beside your loved one, or perhaps down a bottle of pills and cuddle with your depression, consider that word "love." It means only what you let it mean, because it has been perverted over the years by people such as myself, who use it to make you buy something. This is best explained in a line from the pilot episode of AMC's "Mad Men."
The reason you haven't felt it is because it doesn't exist. What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons. You're born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts. But I never forget. I'm living like there's no tomorrow, because there isn't one.
Happy Valentine's Day.
A reminder to those living in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, tomorrow morning you should all get up, put a smile on the front of your head, and cast your vote for Obama in the primary. Sure, you didn't get the fanfare of Super Tuesday last week, but your time is now, so make your voice heard.
And in honor of that, here is a song for the evening.
(yes, I know that some people will tell you the lyrics say "get fucked up," but these people are wrong)
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/07/romney.campaign/index.html
I'll write something satirical and poignant later, but for now, CNN is reporting that Romney is suspending his campaign.
You know, I am really trying to be patient, and hold hope that SixApart will go back and correct at least a few of the things that they screwed up with Release 41. I made remarks that "A statement is not a solution," but I had imagined those remarks would be proven foolish. I've made remarks to other Voxers that I am willing to stick around under the assumption that these issues will be corrected.
I realize [TiG] is dead, and not coming back. Sadly, I am okay with that.
But what about our Vox homepage showing only a few comments, and having to rely on clicking through the different areas to see recent comments (which still does not update in real-time to this day)?! What about the points that I mentioned in my post, which was front-paged, and in which some apparently thought I presented things clearly? What's going on with those?
I mean, really, how long does it take to click "Undo"?
Ross recently wrote a nifty little script to clean up the Recent Activity page, which was listed on the Tech is Good frontpage. I think that is a wonderful thing, and this is certainly not against his work, but I personally don't run Firefox, and while I know Greasemonkey is available for IE, my experiences with it have been dismal.
Though Ross's script is genius, it actually makes me wonder something even more....
If SixApart were to correct the issues created by Release 41, why would we need the script? Sure, it would help for more in-depth activity if I have to catch up to a few days worth of posts, but I try to check here a few times a day. Under the old design, that was simple. Under Release 41, it's a nightmare. If Vox, with their recent TiG of Ross's script, is encouraging this to be a more open-source type of community, why not allow us a bit more freedom? Why not let us customize our homepage? Why not make the code more available, so we could adapt it better to our needs? I like to believe I have a fairly good understanding of code, and I don't doubt that I could mash up something that may be more convenient for my personal uses through an adapted RSS reader, but why?
As an example, let's take something simple and intuitive, like a toaster. You put the bread in and you push the switch to drop the toast. When it's done, it pops up and turns itself off. Perhaps it's because I was used to the old design, but I considered Vox to be about as difficult as a toaster. Enter Release 41. Now you can still do the exact same things, but the process is different. Instead of simply plugging in the toaster, putting in the bread, and pressing the switch, you now have to plug the toaster into an extension cord, put the bread in from the bottom, press a button to make it cook, and hit the switch when you think it is done. It doesn't let you know when the toast is finished, just like it's difficult to know when a post you are actively participating in has new comments. Everything has an extra step. Sure, I could dig through the closet, find my soldering kit, and create some new complicated way to make the toaster act like it used to, when it was simple and intuitive, but what's the point? I'll just switch toasters.
All that aside, though, I have a completely new problem to bitch about. While it may not be directly related to Release 41, it is compounded by the new process of reading posts and tracking comments. Unfortunately, though, I cannot actually post screenshots or links, due to the privacy settings of my neighbors (which I respect absolutely, and will not make exceptions in a post I am keeping public). So I encourage you to take a look at your own Vox, and see if perhaps I'm not the only one.
Tonight, someone in my neighborhood wrote a new post. It is marked Neighborhood Only. I am in her neighborhood. I know I am in her neighborhood, because when I view her Vox, the post is there. However, on my homepage, it doesn't seem to exist. It's just not there at all. At this precise moment, when I look at her Vox, it says the piece was posted 49 minutes ago. On my homepage, I can see three things posted 26 minutes ago, 48 minutes ago, and "Yesterday," which would put it about 1 hour and 22 minutes ago. The post from my neighbor that does not display (despite her actually being listed as a "Friend" on my Vox, and my at least being a Neighbor on hers) should feasibly fit in there somewhere. This has happened at least four times that I can specifically recall, though I cannot specifically recall the privacy settings on the other posts (though I believe, without directly risking the privacy settings of my neighborhood, one was from CupCate).
Now, apparently, rather than simply having to jump through hoops to find posts that are beyond my most recent three or four, I now have to consider that I am completely missing posts from my neighborhood without going to the Recent Activity page, or individually clicking on every Neighbor and Friend to view their main Vox page.
So yes, I am on the verge of either begging or leaving. The hope that kept me around this long is fading fast. I certainly don't believe that Vox would suffer some great loss if I were to cancel my account tomorrow. I don't doubt that I would lose touch with all but perhaps three of the people I have met here. Somehow, though, that is a loss I am more willing to take as days pass.
I'm sorry, but I don't work for the circus. There are only so many hoops I am willing to jump through before I'm over it.
I certainly welcome any and all feedback on this. I sincerely doubt it will get listed as a Tech is Good, but that's not my intention. I am not pointing out things that are good. I am pointing out problems, and hoping for solutions. And for those that want to respond (specifically anyone from SixApart/Vox), or even to keep in touch if this becomes the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back, my e-mail address is listed over there to the right, below the Charlie Chaplin quote. chasingthedollar at gmail.
Please, Vox, just give us what we are asking for. It's not such an absurd request. It's merely what we had prior to Release 41. Don't leave us with the impression that we have to develop our own solutions to get the convenience we had mere weeks ago.
I was trying to post a cheeky thing about how the Vox Political Editor (or whatever that job title is) knows more about Electric Firefly than I do (the "more" being that she is apparently a man), when something decided not to work. Sure, I could probably blame it on a million things, but since the only programs open on my computer were Outlook, Media Player, and one single IE window, I am going to blame it on something screwy with Vox.
Blah.
I just came across the perfect example of why everyone needs to get out and vote. It's not necessarily so your voice can be heard among the millions, but specifically so your voice can counteract the voices of some of the more radical.
Now, as much as I want to make this a lengthy commentary comparing (once again) Religion and/or Politics, I am fighting the urge very, very hard. So I will leave you with two quotes from this person's post, and allow you to take from it what you would like. I am not going to link to this person's post, because I do not want to make this some sort of juvenile intarwed war, but I will say that if you look not very hard, you may happen to find it somewhere on your homepage.
And here are the quotes...
I am deeply invested on turning social issues in America away from a Left Secular Humanist slant back to a Conservative Christian Values slant.
Left Social Issues is an agenda that is nearly had success in transforming America into a society that accepts hedonistic social relativistic moral values as the norm. For my point of view that is reprehensible.
