Blogging and Politics
As readers may have noticed (anyone out there?), this weblog has become politicized. This was inevitable I suppose. After months and months of reading and thinking about little but politics my writing reflects this same interest. As for how this relates to blogging, the jury is still out. Political weblogs have become a significant media source, with both positive and negative results. They cannot be discounted. And has been observed in the past, there are the top weblogs--which receive the vast majority of traffic--and about 4 million others. Even amongst the top weblogs, only a few are political, and amongst those the top dogs are apparent. Some of these sites are listed on the sidebar. I read other weblogs (mostly political) but these are the ones I read on a daily basis. Obviously I have a left-liberal-progressive bias and don't take seriously (or am outright repulsed by) most right-wing or conservative weblogs. Frankly I prefer insightful, critical, non-partisan investigative reporting and analysis, media watchdog groups and the like. But the environment I've described in my recent "State of the American Political Landscape" has made it necessary to adopt a more practical--and consequently partisan--approach to politics. This weblog lets me express how I feel about the political landscape: the anguish, the anger, the dread and the hope of our times.
I am not prolific enough, experienced enough, learned enough or influential enough to warrant any serious attention. Trying to balance my tendency to write as if everything was a graduate thesis with the spontaneity of blogging has rendered much of my writing inelegant. By the time I work that part of it out I might have enough people reading it to make it worthwhile. In the meanwhile I am quite content to type away anonymously in obscurity. After a long break, I'm in the mood again.