Regular readers have no doubt been pleased to see a decrease in blogging activity from this quarter. A decent respect for the opinions of mankind impels me to explain the latest stretch of inactivity.
I’ve been doing this, if memory serves, for 11 years. When I started, there were meaty issues being debated, some of which actually had two sides, or, if that was not the case, one side that had to be explained somewhat. For instance, when I started Bush was busily trying to destroy Social Security, and there were real issues to be explored about his privatization scheme.
Partly I have posted less because I don’t want to repeat myself, but primarily I have written much less because the discourse out there has become so dumbed down that it hardly seems necessary to comment, and, when it is, lightning fast reflexes are required, because if you don’t get it out there within minutes of the event, a thousand internet actors have already pointed out the obvious, so why bother to add one’s mite?
Several years ago I put up a post in which I disparaged Twitter, my point being that the 128 character limit was clearly insufficient to deal with any issue intelligently. Nowadays, 64 characters is often sufficient.
Case in point, the ongoing situation in Oregon. You know the one: White guys with guns holed up in government building demanding their constitutional right to own government land. It’s in there somewhere, I’m sure, though I can’t recall where. Anyway, the point is that the tweets write themselves, and unless you’re first off the block, what’s the point of writing an entire blog post about the obvious. Here’s just a few of the things that come to mind right away, all of which have been explored elsewhere:
If they were black, they’d be dead by now.
If they were Muslim, they’d be even deader.
Why does the press label these guys “protestors” or let them label themselves as a “militia”. And why is the press not pointing out that they are being led by a guy who is looking for the ultimate government handout. Not satisfied with no cost to low cost grazing rights on government land, he somehow feels he has a constitutional right to fee simple ownership of that land. Why him? Why not? The important thing to keep in mind is that he is not at all like all those takers that Mitt was going on about on account of he’s the wrong color, don’t you know.
In the no one could have predicted department: Fox News says they’re just good guys protesting a nasty government, nothing like the thugs in Ferguson who, if memory serves, were unarmed and threatened exactly no one. And of course, no one could have predicted that we’d be hearing pretty much the same thing on CNN. No one, that is, except everyone.
The thing is, it’s not just this one story. In the good old days, for example, when a Republican told a lie, he (usually he, after all) at least made an effort to make it sound plausible. It took at least a little work to expose the soft underbelly of his mendacity. Nowadays, they take no pride in their craft. Does anyone with the minimal amount of brains it takes to read this blog need to be told that nothing that escapes the mouth of the Donald, or his competitors (including especially, but not limited to, Ted, Ben, and Carly) has even a nodding acquaintance with objective truth? They make no attempt to hide their dishonesty. It’s no longer a regrettably necessary bug; it’s a feature. The lies are so obvious there is no need to comment in anything longer than half a tweet, and you have to get that tweet out in real time, or retweet the first guy out of the starting gate, and I just can’t stoop to that (very often). That being the case, what need for the struggling blogger, who in olden times took some delight in exposing their falsehoods. We wait instead for those stopped-clock moments when a stray bit of truth exits their gustatory orifices, at which point we can note the event with the appropriate amount of astonishment.
By this time you are probably eagerly anticipating a vow from me that I will blog no more. Unlike your run of the mill Republican politician, I cannot tell a lie. Well, I can, but I’m not going to tell one at the moment. Despite all, I will soldier on. All I need to do is find a way to make the obvious sound profound. Does Thomas Friedman give lessons?
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