Two Months Ago
I'm sitting in my new office which is six floors up in the South Bay and I can see all of Los Angeles from the center north and east. As I view this metropolis on the eve of this election, I realize that I really, really don't care how they vote tomorrow.
It has come to this, and at this particular moment, I'm interested primarily of the electoral fate of Michael Steele to the extent (and only to the extent) that he adequately represents the Old School, which I think he does very ably. He has been out there, and he has made a national name for himself, and despite the endorsement of good guys and popular guys he may still lose. I want Michael Steele to replace Alan Keyes in the minds of Americans when they think about black Republicans, but I'm not convinced I can do much to influence that change of mind. So as I look out at the city of Los Angeles, I have to ask myself exactly how much I care. Not quite enough.
I'm looking at the state of my advocacy online for the Right and I think I've done a decent job. But I know that bits and pieces of this work are falling off at the edges. Having founded The Conservative Brotherhood, I think we've made some headway in staving off a modicum of ignorance about the center-Right and Right from a black perspective. But ignorance persists as does opposition. I happen to be one of those people who doesn't like repeating himself, and so I'm wondering what it is that I have yet to say and the answer is not much.
I think I've been a fairly good partisan, but others do a much better job than I. I'm much more likely to be analytical than to add to the chorus of me-too on each political meme. And quite frankly as of late I have found that my own patience with the chorus is getting shorter. Not that I don't agree, I'm just sick of hearing the same stories every week from multiple places. Not that my opinion does anything to clarify at a level that isn't mostly echo-y. Sure I personify and give a different spin, but the marginal effort doesn't seem worth it. Besides, the blogosphere is way too large for such nuance to be handled at the trackback level, or so it seems to me. That's where we were 2 years ago, now everything has gone mega, and I lost a lot of my audience when I came to Typepad. Today, I no longer miss being a Large Mammal.
I'm interested in History. I've lost my sense of humor in this blog and that needs to change. I'm interested in Science and Technology. I'm interested in making money. None of those things are Righty Bloggy things. I'm interested in Theology, where heresy matters and people actually keep track. And so Cobb will follow those interests more closely, current events be damned.
Today
War: We are going to have our piece of Iraq for better or worse. And we will swallow the bill just like we swallowed the Savings and Loan scandal. Noone will have Rumsfeld's head on a pike, and I seriously doubt that a Democratic House will have the power or courage to do anything remotely resembling... well anything. The model is Iran-Contra and the horse is already out of the barn. So aside from the nonsense one would have to bear hearing from a Democratic Speaker, I've decided that it's beneath my concern. Saddam is dead. Thus endeth an era.
Economy: The rich will get richer but they won't become wealthy. That takes real craft. The poor won't get any poorer unless and until there is a typhoid epidemic. Those sorts of things don't happen. I still think about it but it was the 80s when we were first warned about Tuberculosis in Los Angeles among the illegals. That didn't happen either. I'm no longer keeping one eye open for that. The stock market is boring once again. Hurray.
Religion: I am much deeper into matters of the spirit than I have been in memory. I am truly beginning to enjoy what had been a frightening prospect. I have a long way to go but I'm confident in my first steps. This will be very practical and very theoretical. I'd like to think I might have a priest, but I'm not sure I will. The possible split in the Anglican Church is resonating with me. I'll be following that more closely, and I'll be specifically watching the Archbishop of York.
Black Partisanship: I'm going cultural, and more specifically into preservation and recovery. I'll be looking for artifacts and creations that emphasize Old School values and aesthetics. I'm not sure whether to focus on mental liberation and the links to that in mainstream culture, but in some ways I'll certainly calling out the Sound of the Drum.
Politics: Current affair curmudgeonry for the most part. Keeping an eye out for deceptions and geopolitical trends. The usual, just a touch more bloodlessly.
History: I'm going to establish this diet. It should be interesting. It will go along the lines of digestion of Classics and the general kind of Recovery I do. So I'll be saying things that sound obvious to the more well-read among us. First stop, Shakespeare.
The New Organicism: I am on the verge of establishing a five year run of being 'just a guy with a job'. I've gone through the technical roof once again, to no good ends. I'm not particularly interested in changing jobs. Gigs that pay 135K don't just grow on trees. So I'll be bored with mine. No big deal. But at the present moment I'm kinda tired of even thinking entrepreneurially. I'm spending more time with the family now. I'm not going to the mistake of trying to fix things when the kids are pissing away their teenage vitality on unsavory endeavors. I'm going to get them all reading Dickens & Mark Twain.
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