Skipping a great deal of boring biography, I was radicalized by my four years in the brackish hellswamp of Foggy Bottom–taken from being a near-nihilist, near-libertarian cuss of a late teenager at 18 to a full-on Trot in less than four years. To be sure, a lot of my antipathy toward Washington DC can be attributed to the mere culture shock of a Coloradan moving to a (bad) East Coast metropolis. But there is something evil about that humid taint of a city. I believe this. I am affirmed in my faith and shall not be shaken; Washington DC is the sweaty gooch of America and our capital is more or less a big marble sculpture of the Founding Fathers laughing at the foolish modern mortals who believed their forebears so infallible that, when they decided to build the NATION’S CAPITAL in a motherfucking swamp, nor was their faith shaken. A humid August day in DC is argument enough against originalism. Anyway.
Point is, I went to college with a very specific goal of doing something in the realm of politics. That lasted about three months. Unfortunately, however, I remained–as horrible beltway trollgoons like to say in tones of self-mockery that suggest more self-confidence than they possess–a political junkie. The political junkie portion of my brain is, unfortunately, hardwired in. That said, I’m not some navelgazing Nate Silver, trying to reduce reality to algorithms (even if I believe, in principle, in our capacity to do so). I just relish the rush of returns and trying to figure out who my elected officials will be from the torrent of data that pours in on election night. I get that most elections are bourgeois concerns. Sue me.
It is that side of me, mixed with the person who more or less self-radicalized in college, who needs to have this blog. This was the time to start it. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but a guy calling himself a Socialist is running a nationwide campaign, and he’s doing shockingly* well. This singular historical moment may have been the event that provided me with the reason to finally jump off that cliff and get a blog. I mean, if I just transcribed my own ultimately psychologically-troubling arguments with myself, I would have a great deal of content. But, before this moment (and the media’s utter inability to deal with it), I had no reason to chime in. Now, though? I’m all in. The levels of media malpractice and sophomoric analysis in the liberal intelligentsia when weighed against the particular historical import of the moment demand that people use their voices in whatever fashion they can. And I went to a fancy city-slicker school, so it’s time to put that book-learnin’ to use.
*Eventually, I’ll work up a post on just how not-shocking-at-all Sanders’ “shocking” relative success is. That was one of the burning topics that necessitated the creation of this here blog, anyway.