For a while there, back when The LEFT Show was new and the 2012 election was spinning up, the show was getting a lot of traffic, and I put the blog to bed. I don’t know that it was complacency, and I don’t think that was. More to the point, making the show took time and some money, whereas writing blog posts didn’t. I made the assumption that the show was going to reach more people, do a better job at helping to inform folks about important topics and issues; the blog was dying.
I was wrong.
It’s not easy – not in the least – to share the 45 seconds of a podcast that random “you” finds worth passing along, especially when the shows run, as this one often has, more than 2 hours. Blogging, for whatever reason, is a means of furthering a conversation and most of the liberal bloggers let America down. Not separately – I’m not THAT narcissistic – but as a group. We got complacent, and are therefore part of the problem. We helped elect Trump.
I’m sorry.
There were those that kept fighting with typed words and shareable content. TPM, Crooks and Liars, Daily Kos, DriftGlass, and Eschaton to name a few.* There were a lot of folks that kept on typing, but there were too many of us that didn’t. We were, if not complacent, too eager to claim a victory that was actually the action of Constitutionally mandated term limits. We got the black guy elected, then we gave him a half effort.
I’m sorry.
To be honest, I worked harder and spent more time and money building the network, but I failed to maintain what got me in the position to land the radio show, which led to the success of The LEFT Show (less shiny now, sure, but still doing traffic). I made the conversation smaller, if more flashy.
So, well, here we are. Life in America is suddenly a silly assed WHAT THE FUCK? and I don’t think I can actually make my brain a dark enough place to predict all the right wing bad that’s coming. The closest I can come, mostly on social issues, is to think about what the opposite thing a good and moral person would do, and try to predict WHEN it will happen (not if).
So, here we are again. Here we go again. Pardon me while I shake off the dust, and take a few of my arthritis pills (you know, while I can still get them), and get back to the work I never should have quit.
I’m sorry, I’ll do better.