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Politics and Blogging in 2005

I quit blogging in August 2004, just before the election, after 20 months or so of regular posting. Picking up a year later, I'm aware of a fairly profound shift in my mental orientation toward politics, one I noticed as a reader, but am far more sensitive to as a blogger.

In the years following Bush's first election, liberals had a simultaneously apocalyptic and hopeful attitude toward politics. We were apocalyptic about the direction of things--first the constitutional crisis that inauspiciously ushered in the Bush era. Then 9/11, followed closely by the train wreck of the "axis of evil" talk, the disregard of the international community, and ultimately, the Iraq invasion. Domestically, there were the idiotic tax cuts and the policies of transferring the nation's funds to corporate behemoths and Republican donors. Thus were we hopeful: surely this kind of bankrupt, dangerous, and incompetent leadership would finally end GOP dominance.

The election has shifted things. In 2005, life is more apocalyptic than ever. But somehow the hope has drained from the liberal troops. Before the election, documenting the transgressions of the GOP carried the hope that these truths, laid out before the sun, would turn people against the transgressors. But now, I am far more resigned to the darkness. The transgressions are so many, the hole we've dug so deep, that to keep mentioning them is like filming an execution. Sure, these things are happening, but do we have to watch them?

In the next few days, I'm going to write a series of posts on "Democratic Values"--those core beliefs we hold (or did once, anyway) that are only guide we have for rediscovering the light. The Dems, who seem genetically predisposed toward inaction, may well never find their way back to these values (never mind this blog), but it will be a nice break from documenting the apocalypse.