Dusting off the Blog

I wrote the post below this one yesterday when the outcome of the election was still raw and eliciting some… emotions. 

Writing it made me feel better. Before I was halfway through, solutions and hope swiftly supplanted recriminations. 

I’ve heard from quite a few friends and family members since then about their own anger, sadness and disappointment with the election result. So I decided to share what I wrote. 

And when I thought about how best to do that, I remembered the blog I used to maintain many moons ago. And I was surprised to see that after almost 15 years of benign neglect, it still exists! So I took the time to re-read all of my previous posts. And a few things jump out: 

First, I’m struck by how much of what I grapple with in this most-recent post, which deals primarily with Trumpism since 2016, was already nascent eight years earlier. I think that only makes more powerful its argument about the lessons to be learned from Tuesday’s results. 

Second, I was floored by a video of RFK Jr. that a friend included as part of a comment on one of those old posts. It was posted on YouTube in May 2008. I don’t know if the speech it captures occurred then or some years earlier. But the contrast with the RFK Jr. we’ve seen in the past few years is remarkable. I disagree with much of what he advocates for today, regarded his presidential campaign as dangerous and do not look forward to whatever role he may play in public health policy for the next four years. But I have a very hard time not agreeing with almost every word in this speech from way back when, about what happened to the US news media since the Reagan administration and its impact on society and politics. 

Next, I’m somewhat surprised, and pleasantly so, that what I believed then mostly remains what I believe today, despite the world changing and me growing older. I do confess to being the tiniest bit embarrassed by a handful of the things I wrote 13-14 years ago. Is Jersey City really part of the “rust belt”? Should I have been a little more charitable toward Cindy McCain, Katie Couric, Jesse Jackson and teachers’ unions? And I’m a little chagrined by how my writing chops have dulled since those first years after leaving journalism. But I remain proud of and stand by almost everything I said back then. 

Finally, as I read all those old posts from the 2008 election and first months of Obama’s presidency, and considered what I’d written about this year’s balloting, I decided that the latest essay really belongs with all the others here. I often said back then that we don’t pay enough attention, seriously and earnestly, to public affairs or truly engage with one another about them. Sadly, that has gotten worse. The tribes have hardened and split. A somewhat self-indulgent post on a definitely self-indulgent and heretofore comatose blog that few bothered to read in the first place probably won’t make much difference to that reality. But it might help some of us. So here you go. I’d love to hear what you think.