After the 2000 election, I was so shocked by the outcome and innocently believed that the majority of voters in the US had chosen the most idiotic person imaginable to be the president. At that time, I had no idea of the election fraud that had most likely been the reason he was elected. I believed people had chosen this idiot honestly.
So in an effort to understand what the hell had happened, I started reading right wing blogs on line. I joined a couple of them and I also began posting on other sites that were more neutral, like my local newspaper. I come from a solid Democratic family and didn't really know anyone who had voted for dubya. And I wanted to understand why he had been elected.
So I read and posted and got to know several right wingers. I even met a couple of them in person. I viewed most of them as nice people, but misguided. They also lived in a completely different world than the one I spend my time in. None worked in helping professions, like me. They were IT experts and salesmen and mechanics. One really nice guy I met on line, Roy, was a retired teacher who had his own business cleaning carpets. Roy later admitted to me in a private email that he had retired after a 35 year teaching career because his superintendent had told him to retire or be fired. It was some long convoluted story about a disagreement with the supt and it seemed like a silly reason to be fired. Roy had also been a lifelong Dem but left the party in the 70s because he hated Carter so much. And he was a rabid dubya supporter. Of all the right wingers I met on line, Roy was the most reasonable and I actually came to enjoy debating him. We agreed on nothing but were able to have reasonable discussions and in a respectful tone.
And so I conversed with the lot of my right wing on line acquaintances for several years. I learned a lot. Most importantly, I learned that I had nothing in common with them. They hated Clinton, I was merely disappointed in him. They were convinced going to war with Iraq was a smart move, I adamantly opposed the war. They were convinced WMDs really existed somewhere in Iraq, I knew dubya was lying. They strongly favored privatizing social security, I wanted the government to quit borrowing from it. They believed public schools were falling apart and vouchers were justified. I vehemently opposed vouchers and advocated even more funding to improve public education. And they had all got theirs and didn't believe the government should spend any money on social welfare programs. One of these guys was on disability and complained a lot about Medicaid, but believed he had earned the right to it and to his disability check because he had been a hard worker before he got hurt.
We had mostly reasonable conversations for several years. There were a few name callers but the majority of these people were polite.
Then Fahrenheit 9/11 came out. About 6 months before it was released, we began talking about it. I was a huge Michael Moore fan and these right wingers did their damnedest to convince me the man was evil. Then one of them accused me of spending too much time over on that "evil Democratic Underground". I had never heard of DU but loved the name right away. So I checked it out, lurked for a few weeks and fell in love. There was an on line community of 80,000 people who agreed with me! I was in political junkie heaven. Gradually, I posted more here than on any of the other sites I had been on.
Over the next 6 months, my right wing on line friends became hostile and downright hateful. The few who had my email address (including Roy) sent me horrible messages, trying to convince me that I was wrong and we should all be afraid of al qaeda, etc. Slowly but surely they cut me off and banded together as 'patriots' who loved the good ole USA.
I had become friends with one of these guys who was a single parent raising 3 daughters. He lived a couple hours away from here and had come to visit a few times. His eldest daughter was a junior in high school who wanted to be a teacher. He asked me if she could email me and talk about teaching. So this girl and I had corresponded for about a year. I had recommended books for her to read and helped her investigate colleges and find scholarship money. She was a neat kid and I enjoyed mentoring her.
Then the week that F 9/11 opened in theaters, my right wing friends swooped in for the attack. They got me banned from one of the sites where we had met by accusing me of sending them hateful personal emails. One of them even posted an email I had supposedly sent him. It was an awful, hateful message, about wanting dubya to die and wishing all of his supporters to be poisoned by anthrax. Only problem was I had never written this email. So I contacted the moderators and explained this was a hoax and my posting privileges were restored. The guy who claimed I had sent him the email was banned.
I had about made up my mind to sever ties with these guys when I got an email from the guy who had asked me to mentor his future teacher daughter. He accused me of sending her porn in an email and trying to seduce her into a lesbian love relationship! He said he was going to contact my employer and get me fired and his buddy was watching me and my house. I sent him a reply reminding him that I could also ruin him if I really wanted to, but this was really just a political disagreement and he was taking it way too far. I also lied and told him I had already contacted my employer about his threats and security had been alerted so if he ever tried to come near my school, he would be arrested for trespassing. A week later, I got an email from his daughter, who obviously had no idea that her dad had warned me to stay away from her. I sent her a one sentence reply, telling her that her dad had asked me not to contact her anymore. Then I closed out that email address. Needless to say, I never heard from that guy or his daughter again.
That is when I started coming to DU instead of all those other discussion boards I had belonged to where I met all the right wingers. I still laugh when I remember that it was one of them who brought me here.
In the meantime, we started having local DU meet ups and I have become great friends with evlbstrd, Mabus, admiral loinpresser, kiteinthewind, comer perro, gilmore, and many others too numerous to mention. We worked together and got Dems elected in our area in last month's election. We formed a new dfa chapter in our area
http://dfha.org/. I now consider DU not only my home but my social life.
I have been to New York and Crawford, Texas and met DUers from all over the USA. I consider them good friends as well. There is an instant bond when we get together. We are most definitely a family.
And the only time I think of the right wingers I met on line is when I remember how I came here in the first place. And you know what, I have never thanked that guy!
So 30,000 posts later, THANK YOU to the guy who told me about the best discussion board on the internet.
DU ROCKS!!
:yourock: :woohoo: :yourock: :woohoo: :yourock:
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