I think we're on the verge of a very interesting and revealing point in our history. One of the reasons I got interested in the internet in the first place was that I believed it had the power to change things for the better by providing nearly immediate access to information - I wrote in a high school English paper eight years ago that the internet had the potential to be the greatest tool for freedom that we've ever known.

The Dean campaign showed that I was only half right - I had never even considered the interconnectedness and the organizing ability it would bring until I started hearing about how they were using the web to build inter-linked local organizations. When the Dean campaign took off, I thought we were finally at a point of critical mass, so to speak - where there were enough people online and interested that the first person to take advantage of it would be all but unstoppable. Unfortunately we're obviously not there yet, even though I think we should be from a purely statistical standpoint (with fully half of the country online now). The worst part, though, is that I'm now not even sure it is possible, not because of the limitations of the tools but because of the limitations of the people we're trying to sway with them.

I've been pretty heavily involved in three campaigns now where there should have been an obvious choice to anyone who actually used the tools at hand to educate themselves, but people seem to actually _choose_ to remain ignorant. Dean had one of the largest and most devoted grassroots machines ever, and it did absolutely nothing to sway the voters. They're so lazy they'd rather allow themselves to be spoon-fed by media corporations driven purely by greed rather than actually taking advantage of the wealth of information right at their fingertips to make honest and informed decisions about the future of this country. Tey can't even be bothered to read a peiceof paper handed right to them! They'd rather choose their candidate based on who they think everyone else is going to like rather than on who _they_ actually like and believe in (how many of these idiots said they loved Dean but voted for Kerry anyway?).

I fear that if this movement does not succeed in four years, it never will. The people of this country seem to be so ignorant and so uncaring as to be completely unwilling to save themselves even when given every opportunity. We needed less than a tenth of all the people in this country to vote for Dean in order to win - a mere plurality of the Democrats, who are just barely half of the half of this country that cares to vote. Apparently there are not even twenty million people capable of thinking for themselves in the entire country!

If that's the best we can hope for, I wonder if this system of government will ever be salvageable. Unless we can find some way to break the corporate stranglehold on government, we're doomed. Democrat or Republican is barely even relevant, as they're both selling our collective soul to greed; the only difference is their strategy. I will always keep fighting for what I believe in, but I am rapidly losing my faith in the people of this country to govern themselves. The only thing keeping this system from being self-correcting is the stupidity of the average voter and they refuse to even attempt to educate themselves. How can we possibly ever win?

I suppose that's as pessimistic as it gets, but I don't see how it could turn out any other way, when all the majority of people are interested in is sensationalism and dumbed-down media content. It's hard not to be filled with contempt when the group of people the politicians have to fight for is the group that doesn't even make their minds up until they get to the poll (how te hell can they possibly not know who they're voting for?????). There's no room for great ideas anymore, just good looks, idiot-proof sound bites, and money.