Where have I been?

Well for one thing, my blog was starting to depress me. That was never my intention.

In fact -- I hate politics. I've always considered it a dirty business. This may be partially due to the fact that I grew up during the turbulent 60s. It is most certainly influenced by the fact that my earliest memories of national politics were related to the Vietnam war, the Nixon administration and Watergate. It doesn't get much darker and dirtier than that... well, that used to be the case. I read yesterday that Bush is now more unpopular than any president in modern history -- and this includes Nixon in the month before he resigned.

The fact is, this current American government is now so dark, and our current prognosis so grim, that I really don't feel like writing about it or even dwelling on it.

This doesn't mean I am denying what I see. It means that I have run out of ideas of how I - one person - can change anything I see. The people who have the power to change things, and who are supposed to be representing us... don't care. They report to corporate lobbyists now.

I still sign petitions, still haunt my representatives. I just don't see that it has done any good or made any difference. The darkness is still here, still growing like a cancer in our government. The current sickness in our economy was completely predictable. It will get a lot worse. The looting and pillaging will continue until it is no longer profitable to loot and pillage. Katrina was the wake up call. Actually, the 2000 election was the real wake up call. We just didn't choose to wake up.

We're waking up now.

So every day I wonder: should I write? Is there any point in it? I could look for the positive. I won't find it in our government, but perhaps at a local level. I can write about the past. For example - I was very tempted to plug the recent HBO miniseries 'John Adams,' produced by Tom Hanks. It was excellent. And the theme song (along with the montage of the early, colonial flags) was riveting. I can't get it out of my head.

I can also continue to post multimedia blurbs from the Daily Show. Somehow Jon Stewart manages to make everything funny. I'm not sure how he does it, but he's a national treasure. He is the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. I seem to have misplaced my own sense of humor, so its nice to know I can always borrow his.

I'm still here. Still watching. The 2008 election will be interesting. The Indiana primary actually matters this year. Now that's news.

Cheers.