One Year In...

Ok, I did not see this coming. If anybody had told me a year ago that I would be an addicted enthusiastic blogger, I wouldn't have believed it.  I thought I'd be posting the occasional humorous military photo and that would be it.  Not so much... Thanks to all the 60,000+ visitors who've checked out my blog this year!

It's one thing to post comments. It suits me to zip in, make an observation, and leave. Part of that is what passes for my style; part of that is experience (what professional training I have started back in the days when writers were paid by the word and the editors were stingy about it. An entire novel could be 60,000 words, tops); part of that is just personal inclination: say what you're gonna say, then stop (nobody in my office will believe that); part of it is because I like humor and humor is rarely improved by bloviation.

People who can write long substantial posts on a topic impress the hell out of me. Where do they find the time?  My life is filled with people, all of whom have real good ideas for what I should be doing with my time, for them, and many of whom I find it hard to say no to. This is not, I'm sure, a rare problem, but it makes me crazy sometimes.  Some of these people, based on experience, I'll be saying no to in the future, others, I have to admit are in my life for the better.  But the time... most of my blogging -- and the rest of my writing -- is being done on the fly between these other demands and that is not how I intended my life to be going at this point.

Although I'm posting in the main about politics, I'm not sure I'll be keeping that up as much.  Understand this: I don't like politics.  I don't like politicians.  I would have been perfectly happy drinking my sangria and telling my offcolor jokes and writing my novels.

But these bastards won't leave us alone.  We are faced with a government that is determined to intrude into every aspect of our lives at this point, from our health care and our homes to our lightbulbs and our freaking yard sales.  Never mind what we want to do with our guns, they're going to push their 'net neutrality' and try to tell us what we can do with our telephone lines, what we can do and say in our own homes, until we default on the mortgages anyway.  They can't secure our borders from foreign intrusion or religious terrorists but they can by god make sure we don't put up any Nativity creches downtown...

And the Admiministration that nominally heads this government, fronted by an arrogant, ill-informed store mannequin, is placing the responsibility for this intrusion in the hands of a group of people so comprehensively corrupt, criminal, ignorant and insular that they can't or won't even keep an accurate count of how many people's lives they've ruined with absolutely no benefit to be shown for it except to their own bloated purses.  They blight 150 miles of farms and pat themselves on the back because they've 'saved' a three inch fish that wasn't even endangered.  They deliberately act to keep fuel prices high because it will 'encourage' us to adopt a more 'responsible' lifestyle that somehow doesn't involve trying to walk to a job 40 miles away or freezing to death in midwinter.  They bow to tyrants but insult policemen, can't make up their minds to send reinforcements to troops in combat but  pile sanctions on an ally exercising the democratic process within their own borders.

The viper that Aaron Burr was fixing at Lady Liberty's throat while Thomas Jefferson was naively singing her praises has grown too heavy to carry any further.  This calls for a fundamental change and fundamental action by a lot of people.

So whether I like it or not, I'll be sticking with politics for a while, marching and writing and working for candidates...but the assholes who make it necessary will get no tolerance and less mercy from me.  I'm sure that terrifies them.  But I think it's dawning on them that there's a lot more like me out there.

Hopefully I'll write something they want to read.