There are many days when I surf onto this site more from habit than intent, and there are quite a few days when I leave this site feeling considerably worse about the future, and sorrier for myself, than I did before logging in. Yet I persist, like a drowning man grasping for a straw, and the cause of this persistence has become something of an intellectual riddle, consuming much time and animating some rather raucous speculation amongst members of my family on what was a rather peaceful and happy Christmas day. "Just why do you blog, Dad?," my children ask. "The blogosphere isn't exactly your scene." -- by which I assume they are saying it is not my milieu, but might be suggesting that it is not my forte --"Nobody really cares anyway."
Well, I don't have any pat answers for my kids. They are both very bright young adults who grew up in this computer age, are comfortable with its precepts, and possess their generation's ease with the idea of sharing one's most intimate thoughts and opinions in a global conversation with strangers. They marvel that someone like me, a solid representation of the age when a liberal arts education was considered valuable, a time when forensics still meant the rules of public debate, and a culture where exchanges among strangers followed staid and strict rules of propriety, would dare to post his private thoughts about public issues in a forum where he can expect no mercy and very little decorum.
Indeed, my parents, who remembered too well the post-war excesses of loyalty oaths and Red scares, were very quick to admonish (not advise) me against joining any organization, attending any meeting, or putting anything down on paper which might "come back to haunt me." My father worked on an Air Force base down South, and he was keenly and ever aware of how dependent he was for his livelihood on maintaining his security clearance.
But if the last fifty years have taught me nothing else, I have learned that I cannot speak authoritatively to those two wonderful kids about civic responsibility and democracy if I am, in fact, just another sunshine patriot who gives lip service to the ideal of participatory democracy while simultaneously displaying cowardice toward the mechanics of actually participating.
As I said yesterday, it quickens me to see them actually enthusiastic about change. That is a beautiful and rare thing in this cynical, mercantile nation we've become, and I feel morally bound to nurture and propagate the phenomenon.
My friends often tell me that I'll be labeled as eccentric or "just another internet crank". I sometimes think there is some validity in the premise, as one quite often meets a fair number of denizens in the cyber-world who are etiquette-challenged, to say the least, and I will be the first to acknowledge my own ignorance of the rather complex rules of engagement here in this forum.
And I know that few people read, and even fewer care about, the bombast I pour out into the ether.
But this is the candle I light against the darkness, the solitary and mournful fool's prayer that rises like incense, and the style of my pity for those whom our complex society and the vicissitudes of fortune have cast asunder. "Hope is the thing with feathers"...as Emily Dickinson so aptly put it.
So I'll gladly admit that I'm one of those curmudgeons for whom being addressed familiarly by store clerks and bank tellers is a major impertinence. And I'll further admit that my presence in the blogosphere is a great sign of contradiction. And I'll even go so far as to admit that some days I'd almost rather crawl naked over ground glass on the lawn of our local court house than read the comments provoked by my diaries.
But when I see that twinkle of bemused pride in the eyes of my son and daughter, even while they are challenging my sanity for doing it, then I am glad I've added my voice to the blogosphere.
And I feel good about the fact that, even if our democracy goes down in flames, I will have done something to save it.