Thirteen Years

Thirteen years ago this coming July I started writing at this place. It appears that I promised to "...talk about politics, soccer and adoption.".

Well, I did that for goddamn sure. At the time, of course, we were in the middle of what was the then-tortuous process of international adoption, so that was a huge part of our lives. Now? Well, there's this salty Asian kid who for some reason lives in our house and leaves her shit lying around everywhere while she pursues her fascination with art and butterfly ranching and polaroid pictures. She's not "adoption", she's just our kid, whose connection to "adoption" is reduced to stuff like giving us a hard time for not forcing her to take Mandarin classes whilst skipping blithely over the fact that she was a total butt-pain when we tried back in the day.

She's a sweetie and I love her dearly, but she's also become a paranoid goober about my posting her picture here (as if any of you, assuming anyone actually READS this stuff which I'm inclined to doubt given the stats Facebook shows me, give's a rat's ass) so you're just gonna have to imagine what she looks like today.

Soccer? Not anymore. I've got a whole 'nother crib where I talk about the Beautiful Game.

Funny story about that, actually.

Back in...oh, some time around 2014 or so, I think, I ran into a guy who ran a little soccer site called Slide Rule Pass. It's gone, sadly, because The Internet, but back in the day is was one of the more thoughtful and incisive Portland soccer sites. I went on as a commentor, got into some give-and-take with the blog owner, and tl:dr ended up writing about the Thorns, the women's professional team here in Portland. Another long-time follower and commentor came on board to write about the men's team, the Timbers, and off we went.

A couple of years later - in late 2017 - along comes the guy who was the then-editor of the "big" Portland soccer site, Stumptown Footy, who poaches us away to do the same thing for his site we were doing for SRP. The original Slide Rule owner is busy downstate, loses interest, stops paying the hosting fee, and the site just dies.

So I end up writing a column called "Thorns FC" for Stumptown for the 2018 season while my compa writes "Six Degrees" - it's a fun column and it's still going. Here's a link to him, in case you're interested. Whatever.

Anyway, I do my thing, the same thing I've been doing all along; analyzing teams, tactics, and results, discussing what I think is working and what isn't. I call my shots, and this doesn't impress a lot of the club's officials or some players, and I don't really give a shit about the "newsy" stuff; I'd rather write a deep dive into league goalkeeping metrics or comparing the play of the Thorns' midfielders.

And this, apparently, isn't what the Stumptown editor wants (despite 1) me doing the same thing I've been doing all along when he hoovered me away from Slide Rule Pass, and 2) my having warned him that I wasn't going to change, and not changing). After the end of the 2018 season, I have the dubious distinction of getting canned from a non-paying hobby gig, which is kind of ridiculous when you think about it.

So I took my soccer ball and went...well, not home, but to another website, where I do the same irritating things only for myself rather than for SB Nation.

At least I'm still doing politics. Well...sorta.

The problem with "politics" as it currently exists in the United States is that they are effectively stymied.

"Politics" is, as bottom, simply the civic discussion about how goods and services are distributed. Who gets what, how much, and how that happens. In a rational polity that process is a sort of give-and-take, with the various factions agreeing, disputing, or (often) fighting over those questions. There's typically a "liberal" or "left" side that wants more distribution of a greater share of private wealth for public goods (meaning a more "level" society with more collective activity), and a "conservative" side that wants less of both, that is, less confiscation and distribution of private wealth (meaning more concentration of wealth, a more hierarchical society, and less collective actions).

But the "conservative" side of the U.S. public is no longer a "conservative party". It's a nonsensical cult addicted to magical thinking like "trickle-down economics" and "taxes are theft" that have been proved ridiculous any and every time they are actually attempted, as well as a lunatic cult of individuality that is perhaps best embodied in the utterly mad insistence on the Right of foregoing protective masks in the face of a lethal respiratory pandemic.

There's no discussing or arguing for or against that nonsense. There is nothing I can do, or say, that will ameliorate that sort of idiocy. The American "Right" is utterly lost, they are impervious to reason and discourse, they are obviously, openly, loudly out-and-proud looney cultists. You can see that as well as I can, nothing I can say will change that, and nothing I can say will help. They're just fucking nuts, and repeating "Jesus wept, they're just fucking nuts!" is the ultimate in wasting breath.

So I'm not really bothering anymore, other than the occasional snark at the idiocy-of-the-day, like the whole "Blue Lives Matter" bullshit I talked about the other morning.

What else..?

I'm still picking my way slowly through military history though I've largely run out of events that intrigue me. I'm thinking of adding one final entry to the "Imperial Japanese Army - What Went Wrong" series this August with a short diversion on "August Storm", the Soviet offensive through Manchuria in 1945, but beyond that...hmmm. Any other suggestions?

I try and keep this from being a daddy blog, so I don't see doing more family stuff, despite the brutal reality that I'm turning out to be a Suburban Dad. Yesterday, "Father's Day"? Moved the lawn. Cooked hamburgers on the grill while sipping a beer.

Christ, I'm a meme.

Portland and Oregon are great places, so possibly I'll keep posting about my Northwest home. One of the saddest parts of the Plague Year is not being able to get out and about the way I used to.

So that's kind of where this place has gone as an early teenager. At least I'm here and it's still here; long-form blogging is going the way of cuneiform, but I'm going to try and make it run as long as I can.

Any suggestions for subject matter, though..?

Oh, wait...

Cats!