thoughts on Saturday

Because of the lively conversation this morning. I made a list...

List of observations:

1. The conversation, even when it gets ugly, is important. So far at least, I'd rather have a smaller audience than an echo chamber.

2. Dissent matters. Even when it confronts things I (or readers here) hold to be true.

3. Resentment is sometimes a place to start. It is not a place to stay. Processes here vary. I, for one, felt the movement called "Puma" - born of deep anger and resentment - should have evolved quickly into a third party concerned with many issues. In my thinking, an opportunity was lost because that resentment did not morph into a third way. The difficulties of a third party in the U.S. became an excuse to not try. I hold fast to the belief that we need a third way as badly as we ever have in this country. Both the corruption of the Democrats and the GOP impulse toward viciousness and stupidity prove this point. The clock is very much ticking on our "way of life" - we need another way.

(I sometimes process my resentments with outright mockery and humor. Sometimes with nostalgia, sometimes fury.)

4. Learning from the past is important -as long as one stays in the present while learning.

5. Forcing those who got lost in the Obama muck last year to see and hear how wrong they were is part of the process of owning and growing into the next place. This task needs to last as long as it needs to last. When a banner across the Huffington Post and the DailyKos announces WE WERE WRONG ABOUT OBAMA, then it might be time to move on. It would be dishonest for me to say that I did not take some joy in just how wrong the Pod people were. I do. My claims to sainthood are a few incarnations away.

Cannonfire put it succinctly yesterday: I wish to hell that these people would just be honest about what they did. I wish that they would 'fess up to the role they played in foisting this nightmarish presidency on the world. I wish to hell that they would apologize.

Given the level of lies, delusion and deceit around Obama I feel it is nearly an obligation to confront those responsible for foisting this nightmarish presidency on the world.

HOWEVER: If resentment regresses into a sniping victimhood then it is mostly useless.

There is some movement among the worst of the "Obots". A realization with some that they have been had. This is progress. Pressing this point is important for a number of reasons:

-Saving liberals from themselves is a decent, if not exactly noble, cause.

-Obama was and remains a symptom of a larger disease that grew out of the Bush era. The trickery is palpable and needs to be pointed out to the tricked. To ignore this is to assume that the democratic systems are working. One side loses, one wins - that's it. But they are not working. We shall get fooled, yet again, if we do not remember the machinations of the dysfunction.

Though we've seen it all before, there was a quantum leap in the body politic in the level of denial around Obama. It took the full force of the media, an economic collapse, a generalized revulsion toward the incumbent, and many of the biggest loudest blogs to get the man to 52%. As with 2000 - what we have here is evidence that the system itself is broken. The media's capitulation to Obama - and to the pro Iraq invasion meme in '03 - are important and similar indicators. We do not live in the country we are told we live in. Standing against the "manufacturing of consent" is one thing a blog can do and do well.

6. I stated that this was a "grievance" blog. This was:

A. claiming ownership of a word used by a blogger who called all Hillary blogs "grievance blogs".(I should have been clear about that.)

B. An admission that nearly all political blogs are grievance blogs. From Kos to Texas Darlin. Americablog took off because of grievances against Bush era policies. Posts at Cannonfire, Noquarter, and anywhere else one cares to alight are almost always in response to grievances of one sort or another. "Beefs" if you like. RCP is a compendium of writers with grievances. Blogs in the realm of political opinion and political writing are all grievance blogs. Having a grievance in and of itself is not a problem. Making the grievance one's identity is.

7. For the most part the best a political blog can do it point in a direction, give an opinion, make us chuckle, or uncover some facts that may have been missed or underreported. I think this is important: Blogs are blogs. Nothing more, nothing less. The obligation to "report" is a fallacy about blogs that is best avoided. I avoid it by writing opinion almost all the time.

That's it. Onward!