Paragraph after paragraph of self-justifying crapola

Well. According to blogger, it looks as though the last time I actually attempted this was in 2007. About 2 years have passed since my last post. After such a long time not blogging, and given the fact that my skills at such were not strong, it would be a fair question to ask exactly why I decided, now, out of nowhere, to begin this again. After all, the form is no longer remotely novel. I have not shown in the past I have anything particularly new or insightful to add to the world of political discourse. My older posts were generally poorly constructed rants-frankly, most are embarrassing to me now that I read them again-not the opinions necessarily, but the way I wrote them and the lack of real thought I put into them, and my tendency to follow the lead of, or to be more precise, completely rip off, other more established, higher-quality blogs. Furthermore, when I started 3 or whatever years ago, I had visions of truly making an impact on our political world, using my insight and knowledge to help establish a new progressive way of thinking-with all of the attendant prestige that such influence would bestow. Unfortunately, my output was, well, what you see on this blog-which is to say, it was at the low end of mediocre. Given this, I now have no such delusions of grandeur. I can't even remember why I had them in the first place.

Furthermore, the tone of my previous writing was, well, bizarre. It's like I was shouting on a street corner. I've been forced to write throughout my life on many occasions, and I can honestly say I have never written like this before or since. It's hard for me to believe that I actually made any of this tripe public. It might have been ok for, say, a diary or personal journal or something, but I put these things in places where people could actually read them. Considering that I made all kinds of pronouncements about the State of The World Today for all the world to read, you might think I would put a little thought into it. But you would be wrong.

On top of the fact that my skills were lacking, the fact is that, as I mentioned above, blogging on politics is not a new or novel idea anymore. The medium is beyond saturated, and there is a well-established hierarchy of elite bloggers with large followings. While there are far better reasons to do this than to garner attention, the blog medium's most useful (to me) innovation is the comment thread, where the ideas of a post can be debated by readers and the original writer. Without readers who are willing to criticize and comment (hopefully constructively, with solid logic or information), I would be writing journal entries again, only in a place where people could read them and snicker. But any hopes I might have of attracting a group of readers would have to be minimal at this point, as the limited market for political blog readers has almost certainly been comprehensively reached by now. This was probably the case a few years ago, when I started writing here, but at least then there was some general buzz about those new-fangled blog thingamajigs. At least to me, the idea of writing political commentary on a blog that people might actually read seemed so COOL, and I just wanted to get going RIGHT NOW!!, so much so that I just started writing posts and linking to things, often without completely reading them. That exciting time, when it seemed that this was a Wave Of The Future upon which brave souls such as myself could ride, is well over, and now I wonder if it just wasn't something that largely existed in my head. Now, the idea of a left-leaning hack blathering on a blog is of no consequence at all-I would be one of thousands, doing something that most people feel they can go back to ignoring, now that a Socialist Muslim used ACORN to commit voter fraud to get into the Presidency and force us into FEMA camps. Why read this little nobody when there are other writers in blogoland of greater consequence and influence?

And thus, why should I bother? I just spent three paragraphs making a convincing argument that I had no business writing a blog, so why have I decided I would anyway? And furthermore, why explain why? If I wanted to start again, couldn't I have just started posting again? Why this infernal metablogging? Don't I have other things to do? Is my life really this empty?

Actually, no. I have a lovely wife I love; a beautiful six month old son with gorgeous blue eyes, ridiculously fat cheeks and a hilarious, maniacal giggle; and I am in school to become a teacher, which I am really excited about. My life is fuller and more satisfying than it has ever been. This lengthy explanation is about something else. I really just think that my previous writing was really, really bad. It was just junk. It was bad enough that I think it merits some explanation, or at least acknowledgement. And I think that starting again after such a long (and unlamented) hiatus requires some justification. Based on my previous work, anyone reading me would have to have thought I was an idiot. I look at it this way: If someone reading me agreed with me, that meant they already agreed with me in the first place. Anyone that didn't agree with me would certainly not have walked away convinced. And, worst of all, anyone that was on the fence about a subject would have had little reason to think I knew what I was talking about, and thus would have had no reason to listen to me. I might have been trying to provoke thought, but I mostly provided unintended comedy.

So, why would I risk further embarrassment? There are some actual reasons, and now that I no longer think that I am going to build some massive, adoring following, I can pursue them without trying to be clever, which is good, since I am not. The first reason is simply because I want to have a forum to organize my thoughts on things I find important. There are things in the world I find important; I'd like to force myself to figure out what I think of them. While I could do this in a journal or something like that, doing this in a public forum will force me to be more careful. Why I think that will make a difference I don't know, since it didn't before, but maybe this time it will stick. Also, the occasional presence of comments is, again, from my perspective, a truly useful tool. At least, I think so theoretically. It might turn out that people tune in simply to call me a douche bag. True that may be, but it will hardly help me to organize my ideas. And it will make me cry. But, that's a chance I will have to take.

The second reason I have decided to re-start my silly little blog is because I wish to construct a political and social narrative that reflects my beliefs and ideas about the world and how it works, including the way I think it should work. I also want to build a counter-narrative to those narratives that I think impede my vision of the world. The mainstream media has, by and large, accepted the narrative presented by America's right wing in an often undiluted format since at least the 1980s, and during that span it usually had a monopoly on how events were presented. Until blogs, few alternative ideas made it through that noise. The rise of left wing blogs was a godsend for people like me who felt, during the Bush II administration early on, that the world had completely lost its bearings altogether. Obviously, times have drastically changed since I first attempted this. The economic crisis is the most important issue of the day, as opposed to the Iraq War a few measly years ago, there is a new president, the Republicans have been reduced to idiotic theater like teabagging, and all of that original anger that served as the original impetus to start blogs a few years ago is different. It is a far more established medium, and I'm not sure I would have much to add to it.

Yet here I am doing it anyway, at great length, wasting all manner of time justifying this excursion. Lord, make me get to the end. In any case, another reason I want to waste precious space is, well, because I am just egocentric enough to think I might be able to contribute to a general store of knowledge. I like knowing and learning things, I formulate opinions about those things, and I want to write about them. Furthermore, as I am back in college to get a new degree, I have access to our university library's resources, including all kinds of scholarly articles, books, etc., all on the magical internet, right at my fingertips. I could quote from obscure journals! I could post someone else's charts! I could footnote! I could write at the level of a hung-over college junior! How exciting! Ok, not really exciting. Perhaps not even interesting. But anyway, I actually enjoy writing in that way, and doing the research, and having to think things through and then presenting them to a potential audience. Given that, it makes sense to write on a blog. Since I am now freed from feeling I have to make some kind of immediate impact, I am free to write on topics in a broader way. Since I am freed from feeling I will ever draw an audience, I can fill paragraph after paragraph with self-indulgent pablum like this, or drone on in the stilted style of a scholarly journal-I mean, who really cares? Who is really reading this anyway? And could it really be any worse than, say, David Broder's work? Or George Will's?

Oh, my, yes. Yes it very well could.

So, what will I be blogging about? I really don't know. Some people have subjects they specialize in or have expertise in. I don't have those particular advantages, so I really don't know where this will take me (although hostility towards Evangelical Christianity will certainly make repeat appearances). Well, politics will come up. I won't attempt to be current-events driven, because that takes up a lot of time I won't have. My topics will have to be broader. I am hoping that writing on various subjects will help me develop a theme that I can pursue in greater depth-more than one, hopefully. I will also probably throw in posts about my mundane life, like stories about how I was riding my bicycle on a training ride when I was T-boned by a pickup truck, and then I had to be taken to the hospital, and then, when I went to the police station later that night to pick up my wreck of a bike and write out a police report, I was arrested on a four-year-old contempt of court charge (this is all true, by the way). Since stupid shit like that happens to me all the time, it will probably find its way into this blog.

And that, mercifully, wraps up this bright new beginning. As anyone could see, I have set the bar low, in a very obvious attempt to make even barely competent writing seem like a success. Hopefully, I will be able to clear that bar in the future.