The Sheer Unmitigated Gall
Why add my voice to the chorus of woe?
I am living through the twilight of the American empire, so, sure, I have lots of thoughts, feelings, and reflections on the madness that is life at the dawn of the third decade of the 21st century. Who doesn't?
Plague. Systemic violence. Oppression. Mass shootings that recur with the seasonal rhythm previously reserved for nature. A failing political system. Whatever social media and the celestial jukebox of always-ready-to-stream Entertainment have done to our brains and our culture. A planet that is on fire. The list of maladies could go on forever and the slow-rolling catastrophe gives me all kinds of feels (most of them bad, obvs.) but I have thus far resisted adding to the list by publicly sharing The Thoughts and Observations of Another Middle-Aged White Male English Major online.
So, what changed my mind? What gives me the sheer, unmitigated gall to add my voice to the chorus of woe?
Like all those who came up during the Web 2.0 years, I used to have a blog where I posted irregular reviews of the media I was consuming and other ephemera of my privileged life. The readership never crested above a few hundred but I enjoyed the ritual of putting my thoughts out there, even if the entries were irregular at best. There is a clarifying quality to writing out my thoughts - I think often of the framing device in the original Doogie Howser, M.D. wherein he kept a (pre-internet) computer journal to reflect on the weekly plot and poetically sum up the lessons learned. Social media, of which I am much more a consumer than creator, has never scratched quite the same itch for me.
And so we begin.
I can't promise eloquence. I'm not sure how personal this may get, though my initial instincts are: not very. I do think that certain themes will emerge, but I am not setting out to apply any particular format or framework for the subject matter. This will be a place for me to scream into the void and I will write about whatever nonsense I see whenever I see it. If you're here with me, thank you.
Let's scream together.
