I’m a liberal. I mostly credit Robert A. Heinlein with that, conservative and curmudgeon though he was. He was responsible for the first aliens I encountered being green, after all. I was eight, I think, when I found Space Cadet in my school library. And folk music, which I hit in my early teens and never quite got over. Conservatives have a hard time with folk music, I find. Especially when it doesn’t like them, which it mostly doesn’t.
I ignored politics for almost 60 years. It was easy, simply because I was busy with other things; for instance, trying to meld linguistics, psychology, and engineering problem solving techniques (more on that later — maybe). Then along came Barack Obama. I’m still not sure why that made a difference, but, in no particular order, I found JED’s site, The Field, Huffington Post, and [small trumpet fanfare] Daily Kos.
I was the perfect definition of a long-time lurker: four comments and one diary through 2009, three years of reading and reccing without commenting, 29 comments including one Tip Jar in 2012. (I’ve never before gone back to look at those first few years, so it was interesting to check that out. Only a couple of hours lost reading through….)
And when I finally started doing regular diaries, mostly I stuck to meta. Why? Because even after lurking and voluminous reading over four years — an immersion course in Democratic politics — I had trouble with understanding the pie and the long-held grudges, and half a dozen other minor points. So I concentrated on site meta (see Pie & Meta Lovers Anonymous 2013/14 list) and on asking questions, rather than trying to provide answers.
At some point, though, it’s got to be time to think I have at least a few answers. That doesn’t mean I’m going to go very far from Meta, but it does mean that there’s lots of stuff that’s been percolating in the back of my head for a while now, that I’d like to see what kind of response I get if I put it out for everyone to fight over see.
So I’m going to try to do just that. Just off the top of my head, it includes things like:
- What’s the real meaning behind the GBCW — an analysis of grumblings about what Daily Kos “has become.”
- Toward cutting the knot/paradox that is the concept of Self Worth
- Why, and how, politics slips over the line into faith, and how to separate the two — and whether that’s a good idea
- What does morality mean when you’re talking politics? Corruption?
- Is radical feminism just the flip side of patriarchy?
- What positive outcomes, and for whom, exist for continuing to relitigate 2016, considering that I have yet to see anyone change anyone else’s mind by doing it?
- Nobody here wants to talk seriously about overpopulation, and I don’t blame them. Can we at least list the pitfalls of trying it?
- Privacy, secrecy, and the perils of transparency (a reprise and continuation of my original diary from 2013)
- Should we be considering that the women we tend to revile — like Betsy DeVos or Kellyanne Conway — might in fact be abuse survivors?
- “Tribalism” has become a first class excuse for not actually sitting down and trying to solve problems that involve people we don’t like. Can I come at it sideways enough to get through to those people who blame it and keep going to another problem? (Thanks to Joy of Fishes comment, below)
This diary is meant as an invitation to anyone who wants to see me attempt/fail at trying to come up with something readable on these topics, or others.
Which of these shall I take a crack at next, or do you have your own favorite WTFs that you’d like to see added to the list? Feel free to pick your favorite(?) or add a new one in the Comments. I’ll make the same request again each time I do one of these, so let the concept stew on the back burner if the request doesn’t bring up any possibilities.