It Just Isn't Fun Anymore

When I started doing this I understood that the primary objective was to have fun, and if it ever stopped being fun I would give it up. Given everything that has happened over the last 14 months, it's all the more important that I heed my own advice. I really don't need the aggro.

And now, it isn't fun anymore.

Really, it stopped being fun during the Great Stupidity Pandemic of 2008, which swept through the blogosphere during the primaries. Given the most promising circumstances for Democrats in a generation, liberal bloggers rose as one and attacked...each other. People can disagree about which side was more responsible for the stupid, but surely we can all agree that it was a catastrophic failure of the liberal blogosphere as a whole. The pandemic killed a lot of things, including any illusions about the blogosphere ever being a substantial force for good, and (more importantly) any illusions about people on the same side (in a broad sense) being able to maintain collegial relations in the face of sectarian disagreements.

The election at least kept me interested. The post-election period was the coup de grace. I stupidly believed that the people who should be happiest about electing the strongest, most liberal Democrat since...well, since a lot of candidates who lost...would, in fact, be happy about it. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I should have known that liberals would do exactly what they have always done every single time anyone halfway decent gets elected to anything: band together to tear down the successful member of the tribe. I've seen it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over in the 36 years I've been following politics, and that's exactly what they're doing yet again. It's reflex; they don't even understand they're doing it.¹

If this is what we have to look forward to for the next eight years, I won't have any part of it. This blog won't have any part of it.

I'm not quitting the blog altogether; I just need to figure out how to make it fun again. In the meantime, there will be a temporary moratorium on political posting here. (I, and I alone, reserve the right to violate my moratorium.) Temporary--until I figure out how, or if, I can enjoy it again. In the meantime, there are plenty of other things to talk about: books, music, movies, TV (another doomed series from Joss! hurray for Fox, graveyard of quality television!), and so on. I hope those of you who have read loyally over the years will stick around in the interim, although I can understand it if you don't.



¹Anyone who disagrees with this analysis is politely disinvited from commenting.