Sat, 2007 Apr 07
Politic
I’m adding a new section today: Politics. I have lots of thoughts on politics, and can be pretty passionate on some issues. I’ve tended to avoid blogging on politics though. In fact, I tend to avoid expressing my views on politics in general. The level of anger and even hatred that minor political differences can engender is not something I want to contribute to. Especially when a lot of my views are along the lines of either 1) this is a problem, but I don’t have a clue what to do about it; or 2) this is really not a big deal–at least not as big a deal as other, but less considered, issues.
And yet, I have had a consistent and nearly life-long desire to “get into politics”. This, of course, is a double-edged sword, when considering whether to blog on political issues. On one side, blogging would be a way to refine my views, encouraging deeper research and consciousness of various issues. The other edge is that I might herein type something with which I will later disagree. The maxim that a word is forever now has the caching force of the tri-dub behind it. But then it occurs to me that letting that keep me from discussing things I feel strongly about is contributing, if in only a infinitesimally small way, to absurd belief that politicians should never change their opinions. That attitude, at least, that seems to be among the primary reasons that Kerry lost the 2004 presidential election.
So, I’m writing this generally pointless article not as something that I expect anyone to read and, if reading, to take anything away from it, but rather as a (roughly) public commitment to myself to break out of my shell on the topic of politics. I won’t probably make much in the way of absolutist statements. Instead, my goal is to force myself to explore issues deeper in a way that would be readable and sensible to others. So, here we go.
