Whenever blogging–endless typing on some site on the internet–became a thing, I was instantly hooked. I have so many words, so much to say, so much need to connect in a safe and ultimately disconnected way. I stumped for Al Gore in 2000. I thought the environment was by far the most important issue. Not just global warming–which I vaguely recall believing in–but resource depletion, the pollution in our water and air, and the unsustainability of our lifestyles. Overpopulation. I recall being a member for a period of time of Paul Ehrlich’s Zero Population Growth. His arguments made sense to me then. Greenpeace. That one where they buy up land so it won’t be developed. Rainforest depletion (The Amazon is the lungs of the world”),
Around 2001 I ran across a column by Thomas Sowell where had a summer bibliography of conservative books and I decided to read a few. My first few were Paul Johnson. I read Modern Times, Intellectuals, then “History of the American peoples”, as I recall the title. After that, it’s a bit fuzzy, but I know I read Peter Bauer and Sowell himself, and Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in one lesson”.
Imperceptibly, I became a conservative. I know by the time Greg Glassman from CrossFit sent me a copy of Hayek’s “The Fatal Conceit” (on his own nickel: at his best, he is extremely generous) it was a done deal.
The foundation had been set in the early 1990’s, whenever the Rodney King thing happened. I was working as a temp in a mailroom and a legal journal came through for one of the corporate attorneys that made the case that the verdicts had been justified in the Rodney King case. In the course of the argument, he pointed out all sorts of things that had been neglected in the presentation to the public by our fucking media.
Did you know he was travelling at high rates of speed, up to 100 miles an hour, as I recall, while leading police on a many-mile chase, and that he blew through multiple red lights?
Did you know he had a couple passengers who were arrested without incident?
Did you know that he refused to obey orders when he got out of the car, and instead lunged at a cop? That he was a large man, at least 6’3″, and 280 or so? Did you know they tasered him twice?
Did you know he blew roughly a .20 on a breathalyzer?
Did you know that virtually the ENTIRE beating caught on video was ruled defensible by the prosecution? It was only the last few hits, after he was seemingly subdued, that were claimed to be objectionable.
Office in Charge on site Stacey King–who did eventually go to jail in the retrial, which most practicing attorneys thought constituted unConstitutional double jeopardy–said they thought about shooting King. Oh, the howls you heard. But they thought he was on PCP. A guy that size, feeling no pain, super strength, enhanced aggression: he could easily kill somebody, and they had already tasered him twice to no apparent effect at all.
You read the whole story, and it was only due to the PROFESSIONALISM of the LAPD that King wasn’t shot and killed after acting like that. Far from abuse, he was lucky he didn’t die. This says nothing about other cases, or the overall tone of the LAPD–the only friend I have stayed in touch with from college went to work there, and he said after a couple years of working South Central there was no way not to get cynical, seeing the same stupid shit day after day after day, and he didn’t like who he was becoming so he left–but in that PARTICULAR CASE, the LAPD was in the right.
I tell this story at some lengthy because I remember that vividly as the time when my faith in the media died. I realized they were LYING, and covering up important truths, just to get viewers, just to construct a simple but false narrative.
And people DIED and were seriously hurt because of their lies. Lying by the professional media is not a harmless crime. Real people suffer the results. They have an ETHICAL and PROFESSIONAL obligation to speak the truth, all the truth, as best as they can determine it. And they have FAILED. They continue to fail.
There was a time when even Democrats would have been appalled at the naked, continual, and strident advocacy of modern journalists, in defense of a woman who makes Nixon look like Mother Teresa (don’t keep that image in your head too long).
Everybody out there, but particularly the Left: look in a fucking mirror, and ask who our nation becomes if you keep bullying, lying, cheating, stealing, in the service of “nobility and truth”, your versions of which you cannot define practically, and cannot defend philosophically. Do you, can you, get the problem?
As for myself, what I perceive is that wherever I have landed ideologically, I have felt the need to have strong and continual opinions. When I was a Democrat, I was a strident Democrat. As a conservative–I won’t say Republican–well, you read this, don’t you?
But the pattern of obsessive, aggressive engagement is the same. That is what I want to start addressing. I have done the work to develop my ideas. This obsession no longer suits my needs, no longer arises from decisions I didn’t make and find myself unable to undo, so I hope this pattern loosens soon. That is my aim and intent, with the goal of being more actually, practically useful.
I was obsessively worried about Democrat propaganda operations against Bush for a long time. Then I was obsessed with Obama, with the patent efforts to install a Leftist regime. If Trump gets in–and he should–I will be much less worried. And if Hillary gets in, well, we Americans have sold our birthright for a day old biscuit and a cup of bad tea. That sort of stupidity cannot be countered or undone. My practical task would then simply be learning how to live in a monolithic and monochromatic State as well as I can.