What about the politics?
I’ve recently lost the taste for political blogging. Largely because I found myself arguing with jackasses most of the time, but also because I can’t really stomach reading conservative blogs anymore. I don’t know, I just don’t like them, probably for the same reason that I don’t like reading children’s books–there’s nothing intellectually stimulating about them. In my experience I’ve found that on most conservative blogs, posts are basically liberal hit pieces, while most of the posts I’ve found on liberal blogs discuss current events and important news. There are certainly exceptions out there like andrewsullivan.com but sites like that are few and far between.
There are also exceptions on the other side of the fence. For instance, a politically left site that I can’t stand is the Daily Kos. If there was a wikipedia entry for “monkey fucking a football” (and maybe there is, I’ll have to check later) then the Daily Kos logo would be right at the top. I remember I got an account there a while back and tried posting a diary entry only to be admonished (rather excessively) by a bunch of users because I didn’t take the time to see if someone else had already written about the same topic. Well, gee wiz, are we only allowed one liberal perspective on a given topic? It’s because of people like that who feel it’s their job to act as the Kos police that the site will ultimately end up a self-defeated derision. After that experience, I ditched Kos forever and started my own blog.
But as bad as Daily Kos was to me, nothing has been more amazing than my recent experience dealing with conservatives on my blog. I’ve actually witnessed the minds of truly bright people literally shut-down before me as they became more right-wing in their ideology, some of them (now former) friends. I still have friends who are conservative, but they are hardly ideologues and talking to them about politics can be a real treat and very intellectually stimulating. However, I’ve found that I just can’t stomach extreme-right wing ideologues as friends. I just can’t see maintaining friendships with people who I consider to be intellectual numb nuts. Don’t get me wrong, one of the people I’m talking about even has an advanced degree–but that’s when I truly realized that education and intelligence are two totally different things. It takes more than an education (even an advanced education) to make someone intelligent, however education does seem to be enough to give one a rather large ego. I’m certainly not trying to speak badly of education, it just amazes me that someone could spend years and years in academia and yet forget how to do something as simple as connect the dots. Then again, I guess there are just some life skills one can never learn from a book.
Anyway, while my experience with political blogging has been tainted, I still think very highly of the idea of putting together a political argument and getting it out there for the world to read. This is why I really dig Matt’s site. Matt talks about important issues and very rarely (if ever) writes ideological hit pieces. Hey who knows, Matt has been able to reignite my passion for design, perhaps he can rekindle my fire for political blogging as well. We’ll see. For now, pieces like this will be few and far between. Besides, Matt has graciously given me a spot on his blog as a contributing member, so when I do get back into the political swing, I’ll have a pulpit (a rather large one) to spew my liberal stirrings back at the world and continue fighting the good fight.
The views expressed on this blog are the opinion of the author and should not be taken as fact.