My role in the thumpin'

Yes, I've been curiously absent from the blogger-seat for the last 8 days. And no, I'm not moping about, cursing the left-wing conspiracy, or studying up on the intracacies of Diebold technology in hopes of filing a lawsuit that will reverse a dozen-and-a-half-or-so elections nationwide. I've been thinking. And reading. And listening.

Listening to the talking heads on talk radio and cable news and acquaintances who have any sort of interest in politics. Reading online commentary, news items, books (yes, I know I'm due for a "what I'm reading" post or two), email, and whatever else presents itself to me. And thinking about what I'm to think of it all, and what I'm to do about it for the proverbial "next time".

Turns out, there's a lot of blame to be put on people just like me, who read commentary from lots of different sources, compile it up there in the ol' gray matter, and then churn out a synthesized and nuanced version of everyone else's take. But it can be summed up on one little catch-phrase that, no, I didn't happen to use, but plenty of other like me did, and I did nothing about it. That catch-phrase? "San Francisco values."

What does that phrase mean? Well, to people like me who actually enjoy political commentary (how twisted is that, by the way?), it means City Supervisors who go on the record as saying the US doesn't need a military, and therefore a WWII warship has no business being docked in the Bay Area to serve as a floating museum to that war. It means having open space laws on the books that are so penal and arbitrary that the cost of a humble home often exceeds one million dollars (and the taxable base for the local governments go through the ceiling), and low income workers are subject to longer and longer commutes and shorter and shorter off-work hours to spend with their families because they can't afford to live closer to their inner-city jobs. It means an intelligentsia that rely on Berkely scholars for "proof" to back their opinions, conveniently ignoring that even sound research methods can be tainted at worst, and driven at best, by selfish and self-promoting aims. It means the home of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that is so out of touch with reality that 15 of their 18 decisions last term had to be overturned by the Supreme Court.

And it means a whole lot of other things that only political junkies who have legislative and judicial matters delivered to them via RSS feeds would know anything about, that I won't bore you with here. But for the people who have other things to do with their time, it often means one thing: Republicans are homophobes - San Franscisco is known to be the home to a lot of gay people, so "San Francisco values" is an implication that "we don't want our country run by a bunch of gay people", right? Well... No! That's not what we meant! But it doesn't matter - that's what people heard, and by crikey, they were probably pretty justified in taking it that way.

I've read through a lot of my past entries over the last week, and I've seen something that embarrasses me a bit. I often allude to items that I'm intimately familiar with, but many people haven't heard of, or are only tangentially aware of, because I'm... well... a dork. And when I allude to said items, they are often stripped of context necessary to bring their full meaning to the front, and to a large extent, a lot of commentators on TV, talk radio, and the Internet are guilty of exactly the same thing, and that leads to a lot of people taking away a different meaning than what was intended.

Switching subject matter momentarily, but a forthcoming circle-back to make the point... I can't get inside John Kerry's head, and I don't realistically have any idea if he intended to insult enlisted military members or Dubya. And any pundit who claims to know what he truly intended is a flat-out liar. But you can't help but be fascinated by how convinced people are of their own interpretations as the right one, without even suggesting that they might be mistaken. To people on the right, they hear John Kerry and they think 1971 Congressional hearings on Vietnam atrocities" and "American soldiers shouldn't be breaking into Iraqi homes and terrorizing women and children". That frame of reference led them automatically to assume that given Kerry's history of talking less-than-admirably of the US military, he must have meant "soldiers are dumb." To people on the left, they hear John Kerry and think noted Dubya critic and Bush v. Kerry '04, and logically conclude that, as usual, he was talking about the one subject he always seems to be talking about: "Dubya is dumb."

I'm reasonably sure that Kerry will never write a book about "I didn't insult the troops, but if I did, here's how I'd have done it" (that's an O.J. Simpson reference, for those of you living in a bubble), so we'll never know "the real target of the botched joke" - but it doesn't matter. Just like O.J., there are those who thought he did it from day 1 and never wavered from that opinion, and there are people who will go on thinking he's innocent even after his book is released. And in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really make a difference, because people's perceptions are already colored by the hubbub surrounding it.

It doesn't really make a difference, but it does matter. It matters because in this age of "everyone has his own version of the truth", there really is a singular truth out there that we're just not ambitious enough to go and find, or worse: we're too likely to see political opportunity in our own version of that truth so we seize that opportunity and ride it for all she's worth. Both sides are guilty, and people see through the B.S., and are sick and tired of hearing it.

Now, I realize that with this revelation, I'm not exactly re-inventing the space shuttle, but hopefully this seminal moment for me will lead to some more focused thought on this blog. I wish I could say that the frequency of my posts would remain consistent or even improve, but I'm more realistic than that. I've come to the realization that while I still believe in the things I've blogged about, and still think I'm correct in my stances, I haven't done a very good job actually convincing people to adopt my opinions - rather, I'm just another voice in the echo chamber. My aim is to move this blog toward a bit more persuasive and foundational posts, with less of the "hey, I don't have a lot of creativity in me today, so go and read what this guy wrote." Whether or not I'll succeed, who knows. But my goal is published now, so I've got at least 8 loyal readers to keep me honest...