Has the Blog Been Given a New Lease on Life?

The reason I don't blog anymore is not because I don't have time or thoughts to share--au contraire!  It is that Blogger is blocked at work, and outside of work, I really don't have time to write or read any blogs.  While at work I take the occassional break to read the newspaper, email a very little, and often have thoughts that I think, "I want to put that on my blog." but alas, I can't.   Then I remembered that I could go deep into the bowels of my blog settings and identify a posting email address---and voila!  The blog has been resurrected.

 

That said, I can't be a time thief and blog all day, so I'll probably should keep posts under control.  But, now that I've lost my entire audience from neglect, I can start posting every random thought I have.  This rocks!!

 

I need to work now, but I'll leave you (that one person who still reads my blog--me?) with two things--first, a great website for self-discovery and a clearer understanding of the political spectrum--left, right, socialist, facist, communist, autocratic, etc... I LOVED THIS.  So far, everyone I've sent it to is with Ghandi, including myself.  I don't know how I feel about that, because I think he was interesting and had some noble virtues, he was also a bit nuts and extremist.  Make sure you look at the US Presidential page after taking the quiz, and if you have even more time to waste, take the quote quiz to see who you think said a list of eye-opening things--that was a shocker on some of them:

 

http://www.politicalcompass.org/test

Lastly, I would like to pronounce intelligent and educated political discourse in this country as officially dead.  Although there are a handful of friends I have where we can still openly discuss the vast sins of both parties along with their respective virtues, it appears that for the most part we are reduced to regurgitating marketing spin, pundit operatives and talk show hosts, and letting the TV tell us what to think because we simply (and truly) don't have the hours and hours it takes to sift through all the sources of information to find the very buried facts. 

As a result, this election season we are left not with two flawed but capable and intelligent candidates who differ on policy, but we instead we have merely the pathetic choice of deciding between a socialist closeted America-hating muslim terrorist plotting to overthrow the country or a wandering, vascillating senile opportunist warmonger devoted to protecting the rich in W's third-term.  People who lean Obama are written off by the other side as uninformed star-struck sheep oblivious to his dark secret intentions and robotically parrot the jingle the right's marketing staffers have carefully crafted, "Who is he?  You can't trust him!"  People who lean McCain are written off by their counterparts as uneducated, gun-toting, racist, judgmental religious zealots blind to their party's abandonment of its founding principles.

The 24-hours newscycles insist upon playing up the most ridiculous details of the political scene and random opinions of random people--all at the same pitch and intensity they announce actual news and people apparently can't tell the difference anymore.  Insane conspiracy theories and fear-as-persuasion abounds on all sides among formerly intelligible people--the blogs and emails are screaming with lies and panic with what each candidate will "surely" do to destroy this country in a few short months.  This country is falling apart intellectually, spiritually, politically and economically.  

It is interesting that conference was so heavily focused on unity--it is surely a lost virtue in our society.

Goodbye, intelligent rational discourse--you will be missed!