I should have written this yesterday (12/31/12), but I was still ruminating about whether (and why) to end this blog.
This morning, I have more clarity. Like a person sitting in a bus, I've traveled long but gotten nowhere. I peer through the window. The road ahead looks like more of the same.
It's time to get off at the next stop.
I started this blog on Friday, October 24, 2008. Between then and now, I have posted 186 entries. This is my 187th. Other than an occasional diversion (once, in May 2011, I discussed American Idol), the dominant focus of this blog has been politics and the media.
Four years of obsessing about politics? What, if anything, was accomplished, as I tracked with growing alarm the rise (and continued rise) of Barack Obama? If I thought that somehow this blog might influence even one person to re-evaluate his or her allegiance to this man, whom I perceive as nothing more than a sleazy politician at best, then surely I was mistaken.
It's time to concede the futility of the endeavor. People's loyalties are not swayed by facts, especially when their loyalties lead them to suspect the veracity, not to mention the very character, of those who challenge their beliefs. Indeed, I've come to suspect that Obama supporters are not unlike members of a cult. There's a religious zeal, an intolerance for anything even remotely related to scrutiny, that brooks no criticism of their leader.
Scrutiny. This, too, was a theme I returned to again and again these past four years. The lack thereof, not by the average person, but by the media. In fact, this collusion by the media to shield Obama from scrutiny while at the same time skewering his opponents at every possible turn is what distressed me more than anything. The only thing even more distressing was that people (Obama people) didn't seem to care.
Ah, but don't let me get started. There are others out there better equipped to engage in that battle. The time has come for me to get off at the next stop, as it were. Not exactly sure where the journey goes from here, but I've got something in mind.
Thanks for reading.
