The Bush Years: An Ambiguous Introduction

I've resisted starting a blog for a long time. My previous attempt, Stem The Tide, didn't last that long and wasn't very good. But I reached a point where I realized that, as someone who wants to somehow make a career out of writing about politics, a blog is a necessity. I need a place where I can force myself to regularly respond to what's going on, feel out out my positions on certain issues, and figure out what works and doesn't work vis-à-vis my style of writing and commentary.

I don't have a very clear idea of what this blog will be, but I do know what it won't be. It won't be the place to go for breaking news (my goal for the moment is four-to-five posts per week). It won't be the place to learn about the inner workings of the Senate Select Subcommittee on __________. It won't be insidery. It won't react quickly to the finer points of Bill X mere minutes after Bill X is introduced. It won't explain why Obama could have trouble with exurban Reagan Democrat soccer moms with two or more kids.

That is to say, I don't think I'm in a position to dig deep, to muckrake or provide the kind of analysis the pros do. What I am in a position to do is try to figure out how politics works on a larger level. I'm most fascinated by the divide between how the world is presented to us by politicians and how it exists in reality. This divide has gotten progressively starker since 9/11 and is the reason it is such a fascinating, terrifying time in American political life. Nothing is more important than the impact politicians have on how we view the world, and this impact arises from buzzwords, from myths repeated until they become fact, and from the marriage of political expedience to our psychological and sociological needs.

Americans, in short, are being manipulated. This is neither unique nor new; every government manipulates its people. What is new is the culture of manipulation and how loud it has gotten. No free country has as broken a political discourse as the United States, because no free country comes so close to treating its political discourse like a circus or a competitive sport. Blogging has improved things in some regards, but it has also paved the way for millions of more blowhards in a country that has had no shortage of blowhards since the advent of AM radio.

None of this really answers the question at hand. So here's an answer, sort of: I'm not sure exactly what this blog will be about. I guess we'll see.