Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Acta est fabula

I was saddened to read not long ago that a blogging sister has decided to hang 'em up.

"I really feel I’ve lost heart for it." she concluded.

I know how she feels.


I've tried to interest myself in posting about the rampant idiocy of the Paleolithic Right, of the profound indifference of my "fellow Americans" as the blunt reality of torture and secret policemen and oligarchs make the fine words on the 18th Century parchments more and more ridiculous and even louche. Of the seemingly endless concatenation of ambition, distraction, uglification, and derision that constitutes the public "news" (the World's Worst Newspaper just downshifted itself yet again, going to a tabloid format that contains less than a page or two of actual local "news" with the remainder the usual wire stories and sports or "entertainment" filler) sources.

I've tried to work up the ire I felt when the idiot Bushies were sending my Army brothers to fight, die, and return in bags or forever marked from a pointless land war in Asia about the idiot farkling about in the lesser-paved parts of the world by the Obamites.

I've tried to regain my antipathy towards the elites whose rapacity and blind greed have helped put us in this handbasket, at the Cliven Bundy sorts of greedy, grifting morons whose blind hatred of the Commons has blinded them to the fact that they themselves are the cows, culled, outsourced, downsized, laid off, crammed down, and eventually ground down by their masters, the very "job creators" they idolize.

I've tried to work myself into a spitting fury over what may well be the single biggest disaster of the Human Era, our own unwillingness to accept that we are changing our very climate. As Chesterton said about Christianity; it is not that trying to restrain climate change has been tried and found difficult, it has been found difficult and never tried.

And after all that trying I keep coming back to the realization...what's the point?

If you're here reading about that you know about it; I can't tell you anything about it you can't find better expressed over at Charlie Pierce's place. I can match Driftglass' incisive spleen, or Krugman's clinical exactitude.

If not politics, then what?


I can turn this into some sort of Daddy-blog, writing about home and family. And don't get me wrong; those things are important. Vastly important. Top-gallant delights and keelson depths, but both utterly central to my life.

But yours? Why should you care whether the Boy is being happy and cooperative or (as is the case at the moment) a sulky young mandrill in desperate need of some corrective action. If he was eight years older I'd be on the verge of wall-to-wall counseling, myself, but you can't do that with ten and expect good results. Or not going to jail.

I could write about what I love. Soccer? You guys hate that and, besides, I already have a place where I can write about soccer amid the applause of dozens.
Well, a couple of people, anyway, then.

Military history. Poetry. Some of the more topical, funny, or curious family stuff. Random musings about men and women, people in general, places.

In short, I haven't come to where my friend Labrys is.

I still like the sound of my own voice enough to continue writing and posting here. But I suspect that I, too, will spend less time on the rostrum shouting at the crowd that passes by deaf to the sound of my most impassioned oratory.

10 comments:

Ael said...

Don't you dare hang it up.

I need a place to post pithy proverbs.

FDChief said...

I'm still here. Just going though my periodic re-evaluations of "what am I doing here..?" on this blog.

Leon said...

Write it, I find most of your posts interesting. Your family life stuff is interesting because it's something I don't experience - other side of the hill and all that.

Rank Bajin said...

Don't go quiet mate - that's what they rely on!

Lisa said...

I'm with Ael. Let's talk about things that matter, and enrich our lives and understanding.

I think we can look back at Inteldump and see that as a moment in time at the outset of the terrific folly, when we were trying to make meaning.

We've found the meaninglessness now, but there are other things. Like you, I am feeling a transformation. I will be voicing these thoughts at RAW; it is a distillation of where I stand.

This blogging business has revealed much to me about the sorts of people who participate in these social networks; I can't say most of it has been too pretty.

... however, making your acquaintance was one of the high points, bar none.

Brian said...

Don't hang up!
I enjoy your political rants as much as I enjoy your lengthy, well-researched and detailed military history posts (not always battles I'm interested in, but your batting average is good). And I love your war stories about being in the Service in the 80s... about the same tiem I was, under different circumstances.
But I understand your frustration with having to write, one more time, about the slow-motion trainwreck that is all around us, and will keep falling for a while before the sudden stop.

Lisa said...

Brian:

Yes, I too love his war stories! Chief is a master of observing the human animal, and he weaves a wry and thoroughly entertaining tail. He reveals us all to ourselves (human, all too human.)

Myself, I have also enjoyed his fantasias of life in other eras, from the animal's perspective -- they're both informative and deeply compassionate.

Lisa said...

Oops --

That would be "entertaining tale".

Tho' sometimes it's about tail. (Sorry, I just learned what a "tranny" was this week (not transmission), and I think it's corrupted me somehow.

FDChief said...

You guys reminded me that I owe you the "next chapter" of my Army stories, about Panama and going to hootch jump school.

Podunk Paul said...

All of your stuff is interesting, Chief, even the long-winded disquisitions on soccer teams no one has ever heard of. (No, just kidding.) Your take on military history as it was experienced does what Kegan has tried to do, only better. Your account of family reminds me of my family when the children were young and nothing was settled. And by all means maintain the connection with poetry. And, while you may be beating a dead horse by castigating Repubs, no one does it better than you. Keep up the good work.