Recently, I’ve been on many mailing lists bewailing the results of the November election. There are discussions about how to reform the Democratic Party. Should Howard Dean become the DNC Chair? Should people leave and start a new centrist party or a new progressive party? Fighting between Democrats is rampant on the mailing lists, all as everyone searches for new messages, new ways to frame messages, and new voices to deliver the messages.

On a mailing list for Meetup hosts, people questioned if Meetup had outlived its purpose, if it was a good system to use anyway, and if Meetups were effective tools for organizing and for helping get people to move from being “transients” to being “Do-ers”.

Review: You will love “The Wire”. In the audio commentary for show #1, the creator of the show describes the first season as being about class warfare waged against the lower classes and the challenges of living and working within the requirements and contradictions of a modern hierarchical organization, be it a police department or a drug gang.

I am saddened (and angry) by how much we are being duped and used by the present administration.

But, I am more profoundly saddened (and mightily angry) by how much we are letting them do this to us.

We are victims, not of “them,” but of ourselves!

This Thanksgiving, I will be thankful for everyone who remains concerned about the greed and materialism that a culture of Consumerism and Corporatism is promoting, and I will rededicate myself to the struggle against this greed and materialism.

Classic Quotes from Leviticus – Old Testament

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have learned a great deal from you and understand why you would propose and support a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. As you said “in the eyes of God marriage is based between a man a woman.” I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination… End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God’s Laws and how to follow them.

1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?

and more …

Bill Moyers has an excellent essay Democracy in the Balance

How do we nurture the healing side of religion over the killing side? How do we protect the soul of democracy against bad theology in service of an imperial state?
by Bill Moyers

Zephyr Teachout has a great new post at Personal Democracy Forum

By Zephyr Teachout, 11/17/2004 – 6:27pm

If there had been no Internet, what would have been different in this election?

First and most important, I cannot imagine Al Qaeda without the Internet. Which is to say, I can’t imagine the huge shock of 9/11, the bombings around the world, videotapes of begging hostages, etc. While terror and violent ideology is possible without the Internet, Al Qaeda’s particular brand of distributed terror–a centralized, coordinated message with relatively autonomous cells and projects–is impossible to imagine effectively without the web. The entire election would have been different — the world, global politics, everything. We might be focused on North Korea, instead.

This Week’s Clue: Getting Over It

Losing an election is like losing a loved one. It’s like losing yourself, in a way, losing a possible future and seeing another, bleaker vista open before you.

Acceptance lies at the end of the road and, slowly, I’m coming to that. Not that I believe George W. Bush won re-election legitimately. The maze of local election laws, their easy manipulation, and (especially) the large number of electronic voting systems out there without paper audit trails means he can’t really prove he won. Nor could anyone.

The future will be built by the content created and distributed by we the people. We have already today, for example:

Bittorent — the people’s distribution platform
SecondLife — the game, as production by the people at the edge, not in Hollywood
Wikipedia — the people’s encyclopedia
social tagging of content — the people add value
blogs — the peole rediscovering their voices, conversations and authority
podcasting — the people’s radio

Put simply, the Democratic Party is people that care for one another. They care for one another at the edges, without the need for a centralized authority. You see it in emails and in blog links. You see it in random acts of kindness and people sitting down together and searching for common ground. You see it in the recent discussion in blogs about strengthening the good and ‘Blogger Corps’.