All is bad that is imposed from without. -- Isaac Asimov
Friday, August 15, 2008
So…so right
Drummie always gets a base hit with his posts.....which is why I started blogging here.
But what I want to do is to explain the ‘blah’-ish doldrums here.
I know my reasons.....work has been frustrating, the summer has been busy (with kids 10 and 9, you know the drill), and I’ve been writing columns about wrestling, politics, or both since 1998 or so.
So, I can say I’ve had other things on my mind except writing. But I’ve been watching the election, as my two last posts suggest. And there is an apathy that I readily admit is in the air around my keyboard.....and all the authors that post here.
And I think I can place it. I think I can.
It’s not really the POTUS campaign itself, but two main factors, which I will discuss at more length under the fold. These two factors have taken a lot of the air out of the sails of the columnists that post here....and maybe the commenters, too. But, one thing before I get to that.
The whole flame war with and at Lee’s site soured me to blogging. It is easy....so frackin’ easy....to get into an echo chamber when blogging. You don’t really feel it, or even see it, because you’re enjoying the fact that the people that read you or comment on your posts agree with what you are saying )for the most part). Lee’s site became a echo chamber, and opinions that were in opposition (Remember the whole ‘Geneva/waterboarding/torture’ episode) were basically assaulted with a viciousness and bile that was, and is, very effective in making the target of the attack stop posting comments and/or responses of any kind.
I haven’t been back to that site since a week after Lee went to China. There was no reason to do so. There was no allowance for differences of opinion.
I get the fact that people tend to hang around people that are like them; I tend to think of it as an outgrowth of the herding instinct. There’s a comfort level inherent in that, but when thinking about Lee’s site I would consider myself as conservative (and not even the Sean Hannity-type ‘conservative’, but a quasi-Libertarian/federalist conservative in the fashion of John Locke) as the posters over there. I just held the opinion that the POTUS was responsible to uphold the COTUS first, then the treaties signed to by Congress. There cannot be any duty greater than defending the Constitution....that’s the oath, isn’t it? I wasn’t asking Bush to overthrow the Bill of Rights, but voicing an opinion. And I was personally attacked for it, as were others.
So, that’s part of the reason I haven’t posted a lot. Now, the election:
There are two reasons I think people are not quite enthusiastic at this site:
1. This campaign is already three and a half years old. Hillary Clinton was running for President in 2005, for the love of God. So was Obama. And, for that matter, so was McCain. I knew this election was going to be a wide-open event, and it had turned into a slog. With the over-coverage both Clinton and Obama got (and, as we know now, the under-coverage Edwards got), the news was inundated with cloying, festering, sickening political fellatio. The underwhelming GOP field, with the only sympathetic coverage going to the outlying Ron Paul. You had the disappointing Guiliani, the promising but disorganized Thompson, the stiff and unrealized Romney, and Huckabee.....then, McCain, who really won because there wasn’t much else to choose from. I was so sick of this primary, I didn’t even liveblog the Ohio Primary, and I love liveblogging! I didn’t care. So, the first reason everyone is kind of ho-hum is because this has lasted a lifetime, and we haven’t liked what we’ve seen.
2. The way Obama is being treated and reacted to. Folks, this guy is truly an empty suit, politics as it suits him guy. He lies. He changes his mind. He goes against things he swore to the previous day. He’s arrogant, socialist, inexperienced, spoiled, rich, and a flip-flopper. And no-one cares. Really. He could rip the heart out of a newborn baby, and they would say that he has the right to post-birth abortion. Oh, the right has nailed him several times, but his supporters completely ignore his faults. He represents the hard, Kos-ish left of the Democratic Party, and that clique is going to do whatever it takes to get him elected. Why? Because they are still pissed off about 2000, because they couldn’t do to Bush what the GOP did to Clinton, because they couldn’t stop the War on Terror, and because the people that they got elected in 2006 have been hapless and pathetic. They are angry, and it doesn’t matter anymore...they will put this guy into the Presidency because they truly feel they deserve it. The Kossacks, the rich white leftist elite (who Obama emulates, by the way), the Vietnam-nostalgics, and those emotionally-scarred liberals that just couldn’t get Bush. Add in the MSM, and you have a huge group of people that simply don’t care how dangerous Obama would be in this age...the are going to simply ignore his faults, his failings, and his inexperience, and report nothing but what props him up. It’s nauseating, clearly corrupt, and no matter the salient arguments, they are completely sold out. And that is frustrating....to the point that you say, “Why say a damned thing? It doesn’t matter!”
Well, that’s my take. I’ll be around a little more often....I don’t think I could keep myself away.
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