Stay on Target . . .
For weeks I’ve been saying I ought to bring my own blog back to life. For days I’ve been making some sort of effort. On this day, I feel genuinely good about the results. Here are a couple of paragraphs for your perusal . . .
Responsible civic discourse is always degraded by appeals to fear and hate. Yet it can be elevated by appeals to hope. This nation has made many monumental efforts through the decades. Some, like marginalizing indigenous tribes or organizing the Confederacy, were the product of fearful and hateful rhetoric. By contrast, hopeful rhetoric has inspired our greatest achievements, from the Internet to the Apollo Program all the way back to the Constitution itself.
and
Perhaps there is no force in the universe that could silence all the fearmongering and hatemongering noise machines in American politics. Yet that is no reason at all to bend to any particular agenda. The ultimate tax cut would not address the realities of homelessness, domestic hunger, and preventable loss of human life that occurs in our cutthroat economy. The ultimate drilling initiative would not address the realities of toxic byproducts, industrial emissions, and rising greenhouse gas levels.
The entire piece, “What You Should Think About Hope,” is available at this link. In any case, I hope plugging my own stuff up here like this isn’t inappropriate. I know I’ve uttered barely a peep here (or much of anyplace else) in recent months. However, the big show is little more than three weeks away, and I think I finally spoke to that subject without losing coherence or otherwise getting sloppy. Please feel free to excerpt or redistribute entirely the original piece. In the mean time, keep fighting the good fight.
No rules against blog pimping here, and particularly when you have a damn good one to pimp. I’m glad to hear you’re getting re-energized for it.
I think our only two rules are: categorize your posts and don’t be an asshole (constantly). Many offenders of the first rule but only one I can recall for the second.
Comment on October 13, 2008 @ 9:35 pm
Demonweed, I read your piece; while you strive brilliantly to speak moderately and carry a big analytical stick, you should recognize the possibility that if McCain wins, you’re going to be one of the first to be ‘gone missing’, somewhere out in the onion fields.
I shall be the second, and at that point, right before the blue plastic bag descends upon the seat of our various thought processes to prevent further oxygen intake and insure the delicate future of neoconservatism, I shall quite rudely mock you for your early Bush vote.
At that point, you need to start some shit, to distract the guards. The old ‘Fake Fight’. I’ll take the two on the left, you take the three on the right, and in the end, we’ll hock the story to the New York Times, just like in ‘Three Days Of The Condor’. Probably a reward involved.
This particular plan worked well in an episode of ‘Combat’ from the fourth season. I’m sure we will prevail; the good guys always do in ‘Combat’. I hope you can do a good Vic Morrow impersonation, though.
No, not that one. Now, that’s uncalled-for.
PS: McCrappy, obviously you know nothing of the rudiments or logic, or history, or the English language, or mathematics, or indeed of any subject whatsoever outside of a few rotting volumes of pulp sci-fi from the fifties; you need to read some Pynchon/Conrad/Limpkin/Puffy/Poodle/Beeswax/Nimnit/Spewer/etc. before even venturing one of your ill-conceived and indescribably smelly forays into the rareified air of my Beautiful Reality, and please prostrate yourself first, genuflecting in the manner described in Herniatze’s ‘Bowing To Egomaniacal Nutballs For Idiots’. I wager you can’t even make it through the first chapter, you PUERILE, PUSILLANIMOUS BOLUS OF SCOTTISH DOLT-WEED!!
What? No, this is abuse. Arguments is right down the hall, Room 7.
No, it’s not. Yes, it is.
Five pounds, please.
Comment on October 13, 2008 @ 10:15 pm
Thanks. I missed that (just a little).
Comment on October 14, 2008 @ 6:36 am