One of the reasons I struggled so long to find something worthy as the primary subject of a blog was that I had my original anchor topic cut out from under me. As I described in my original post, it wasn’t until my relocation here to Dallas that I had a new one.
I was going to blog primarily about politics. While I might still post on some political topics from time-to-time, politics won’t be a focus. I find it cathartic to explain why, though I’ll sheepishly admit that it results in a very long post.
There are two problems with focusing on politics. The first is obvious – it’s damned hard to offer something original in that arena and much harder still to draw an audience. There’s just so much competing content out there. Without an audience you can’t hope to make a difference, and without that why bother sounding off? The second problem is closely related, less obvious and more intractable. Some background is in order.
My interest in blogging about politics was the simple culmination of a decade-long trend. After graduating college politics slowly became a hobby. At first I tracked parties, issues and players in the same way that many people follow leagues, teams and players. But I found that the average person I discussed and debated with was often just as well informed as I was. Gradually that changed.
Over the years I went a layer deeper. I read up enough on history and philosophy that I believe I gained a lot more context on current events and the forces behind them than the average person. To continue the sports analogy, it wasn’t really about teams and players any more. It was about the rules of the game everyone plays under to prevent chaos on the field. It was about what the laws of physics would do to the ball regardless of how well the players behaved or how much we liked them. With that change of perspective it wasn’t long before I became a very effective debater. Of course I wasn’t alone in this track of personal development. Some of my best friends read the same books and followed the same sources that I did. We each challenged the others’ thinking and improved together. Unfortunately, the country at large was heading in the other direction.
I don’t suggest that there was once a golden age when political discussion was purely a genteel and civil affair, but by the time of Bill Clinton’s second term I think things had become nasty in a way that they hadn’t been before. I’m sure that earlier generations of politicians and voters called each other names from time-to-time, but I’m also sure that they didn’t regularly compare each other to Nazis. By the late 90′s that sort of thing was becoming pretty regular, and it went downhill from there. First there was the deep bitterness over the contested presidential election of 2000. Then there was 9/11 and it’s ongoing aftermath. What might have united us has instead served to divide us against one another so much that it might exceed everything in our history except the Civil War. Meanwhile we’ve got some very real problems that aren’t being solved.
The teams are no longer out to win the game. They are only out to see to it that the other team loses. In fact, neither side will even trust the other to play by the rules any longer. We hold each other in such low regard that we’ve gone from being opponents to being enemies. There’s a difference. Enemies don’t engage in dialog and resolve their differences over matters of principle. They demonize each other and shoot to kill. Think about it honestly – how long do many of you Republicans or Democrats out there think you could carry on a meaty discussion with your opponents before one of you escalated into raised voices and personal attacks? See? We’ve gone past the point of entertaining philosophical questions or the relevance of history. Drawing an audience at all is hard enough, but who’s interested in a politics as a form of the Jerry Springer show as their reward after doing so? Not me.
Although I didn’t consciously realize it for some time, deep down inside I think I knew that blogging about politics had slowly become a choice of irrelevancies. The best possible case had become either preaching to a large and raucous choir or shouting at a long and stony wall. By early 2006 something deep inside me, something way below the realm of conscious thought had realized this. There was no longer any hope of learning from opponents or changing minds. So I didn’t blog but I couldn’t say why.
At least not until I made trip to Shanghai last January. But that, as Alton Brown might say, is the subject of another post.
