Dismounting from the high horse

If you’ve been following this blog for any protracted amount of time, you’ll know that I’ve taken it on myself to break away from ranting about politics. Instead, I planted links to news sites I visit. You want the news I read and the opinions that I mostly share about current events…well, there you go. The ‘toonists I picked out for the link bar on the left also share my feelings most of the time. So, why bother. I tried writing about Team Bush and Iraq and all it got me was a new identity as a card-carrying member to the vast army of bloggers who just regurgitate wire stories or previously filed blog reports. It’s an easy shot to make from the Internet sniping post…little thought involved and you’ll be in large company…and there’s something always comforting about being with the crowd than against it. It’s no surprise that instant political punditry is to blogs as porn is to successful Web ventures. There’s an easily filled niche, and too much is never enough for it.

That’s not to say there aren’t good politically oriented bloggers out there. I mostly read alternative ‘toonist Dan Perkins’s (a.k.a. Tom Tomorrow) blog, because he constantly has sharp and fresh views despite his thorough dissection of everything about Team Bush, their incessant corruption and their bipolar attitudes regarding Iraq and North Korea. I admire Dan for his hard work and creativity, but, like all bloggers, it’s still a one-note orchestra if you pull back and watch it from a high vista. It’s either “The GOP are racist, clueless boneheads ready to ruin the world and your children’s future by creating a world with no rights and CEOs as overseers” or (if you are a GOP fan) “Liberals are demons managed by Klinton to ruin the world and your children’s future by having them taught by gay teachers and forced to get abortions." Or something like that. Your mileage may vary.

(For the record, Dan’s non-political essays, including about life in New York during and after 9/11, are astounding. Troll the archives and you won’t be sorry.)

So, I stopped my little foot soldiering in the Insta-Pundit Blog Army (I.B.P.A…sounds like a revolutionary group out in the jungles) when I got worried about how bloggers are quick to takes sides and stay there, no matter what. It’s the Web equal of the “Gangs of New York,” arming up with their colors and leaders to do battle on the streets of blogspace, tearing each other a new one in the name of “truth” or “fairness” or whatever the hell keeps them going through press releases and news reports, forming opinions and high-fiving each other when they post, thinking they’ve just taken a shot across the bow of the enemy.

I can’t do it. I can’t just line up into a groupthink on a daily basis like that. Hell, I don’t know what I’m going to wear in the morning. I change my mind from time to time and I try to go slow and read deep before jumping to conclusions. Years ago, when I just got out of school, I took a job at a high-tech recruiting firm tracking down personal data to revive old files. My wanker of a then-boss once labeled me as someone who’s “more deep than quick.” As much as I didn’t like the guy, I found it a decent assessment, one I try to hang on to in the Instant News culture of the Web, where anything can come down the wire at any moment…and still be wrong. I’ve gotten burned by “breaking” news before, and coupled with the groupthink, I decided to leave the political blogging to the partisans as they gather in the hills, singing their songs of home and hope well into the night. Let them. I’m going for more personal and imaginative posts here. Frankly, the Web needs them wrapped in a blog. With the death of “Farscape” and “Firefly” on the Sci-Fi channel and FOX, respectively, and the ascension of more “real” and reality-like TV cop shows, I think it’s time to break away from police procedures and corporate-funded “true life” programming and try to make art wherever we see it. I think I’ll still be able to form my own opinions without resorting to the crutch of running back into the ranks of the blog’s amateur Punditsphere.

Since I’ve stopped writing about politics, my brain has gone into its blissful, creative niche in the right brain, veering away from the analysis basement of that left lobe. I can read the news without having a primal reaction to slap it up here and say, “That George Bush sucks rocks.” It frees up time to dream up fiction when you stop thinking you’re running some important news outlet. You’re writing about you, dimwit. Leave the news to BBC and leave the tribal warfare to the political bloggers, always eager to tear down and hurl word bombs.

What it comes down to is, when you are writing to along with the crowd, you aren’t writing about things about you. Who is more important?

I’m happy, something I wonder if those bloggers ever are.

Today’s Word: Sin

From One Word

Sin is the basis for creating saints. Without sin and its cousin, temptation, there wouldn't be holiness or heaven or angels or whatever. Sin is vital to survival because it points out what drives us as humans. I guess.