Let's Give This A Try Again

I'm going to take another shot at this blogging thing. This'll be attempt #3, #4 if you count the early LJ years. It always does feel a bit like shouting into the maelstrom, but I feel like I've got to, on the meager chance that anyone outside my circle of friends might catch a phrase or two.

So the question becomes why do I feel that way. Ego, mostly, I imagine. There are, at last count, 7 billion blogs on the Earth (6 billion people, but at least a billion of them have alternate blogs that their bosses can't access), and to think that my voice out of all that noise is worth a read is beyond vanity. But I shout so often at my coworkers, classmates, and my beloved and indulgent girlfriend about the latest political awfulness that's bothering me that it seems only fair that I spread the noise about a bit.

If nothing else, it's the recent death of Senator Kennedy that made me want to get back into the game. I'd been kicking around the idea all summer, really dwelling on it for the few days following his death, and then I saw a picture on TPM that made it clear that I had to. At the center of the picture is a man in a t-shirt, jeans, and work shoes. Clearly working-class, probably not someone who knew the Senator, spent summers in Hyannisport, or had ever wandered the halls of the Capitol. If ever there was a poster of "just a guy," it was this fellow. And there he was, fighting back tears at the sight of Teddy's coffin.

That a single man could have done enough for his fellow citizens to provoke that kind of response... I was reminded of everything I love about my country. It's been a hard couple of months. I've watched our public discourse hijacked by the least informed and the most corrupt among us. I've watched the country that once (and still, I have the audacity to hope) stood as an example to the world of what can happen when a people take their own destiny in hand... argue at length and with great vitriol over the controversial concept that a nation should look after its own. The idea that the same people who can praise the Christian origins of our country can so blithely not just ignore, but openly mock Christ's call to clothe the poor, feed the hungry, and heal the sick has called into question my faith in not just our nation's basic creed, but the goodness of humanity as a whole.

Listening for the past few days to men and women praise the works of Ted Kennedy over his 47(!) years of service in the Senate, re-living his speeches, his legislative achievements, his simple ongoing faith in the possibilities of this country, has gone a long way toward bringing me back from the edge of apathy. Five decades of relentless legislative battle on behalf of the poor, the sick, the least among us, all the while dealing with more emotional baggage than anyone should reasonably have to carry. And here I sit, employed at a wage made livable by Ted, going to college on loans made possible by Ted, and I'm complaining about how awful it is to read about Rush Limbaugh's latest verbal excretion. How horrifyingly self-absorbed and whiny.

So I'm going to blog. As tributes go, it's woefully inadequate, I know. But in the classically Irish way, I've only got two ways to fight. I'm about 5'11" and weigh 150 when I've been out in the rain with rocks in my trousers, so fisticuffs won't work out. So it's got to be by sheer balls and blarney, and I think I've got at least the latter to spare. I don't quite know what form this'll be taking just yet, but I imagine it'll be a fair deal of raging at the wind, with a bit of history, cooking, and baseball thrown in for variety. I hope it'll be readable, and most of all, I hope it'd be something that Teddy would read every now and then, nodding at some bits, laughing at others. Because for fuck's sake, if you can't take a step back and laugh at the whole thing every now and then, then it's a damned sad life you've got.

In the meantime, I'll leave it with a quote of T.H. White, which came to me by my father, still the best man I know:

"Now the king had an idea, and the idea was that force ought to be used, if it were used at all, on behalf of justice, not on its own account. Follow this, young boy. He thought that if he could get his barons fighting for truth, and to help weak people, and to redress wrongs, then their fighting might not be such a bad thing as it once used to be."