evolution

A “NASCAR ALERT”.
Thanks for helping me to know
when to change channels.

I’ve been trying to put a finger on what’s been eating me for lo these many months, and what’s eating many other good people; the thing that I think is the main contributor to this political no-man’s-land in which the rest of us find ourselves.

Political belief, it seems now, is the single largest factor in the determination of a person’s public life — the places you can go, the set of friends you can have, the range of opinions that are acceptable for you to hold, the jobs you can have, and increasingly such things as where you can live or who you can date.

There are, as you might expect, people who are happy with this. To an extent, I have been one of those people. Blogdom has a high concentration of those people. Certain professions have a high concentration of these people.

Others are not. They might have a tendency one way or another, but they feel pulled in different directions depending on the situation, and they are tormented to the point of depression about it. I think this describes me most of the time. They either shut down completely (as I have contemplated doing) or it consumes them, they leave the flamethrowers on, and they become part of the machine (which I have sometimes given in to¹).

Social conservatives in their heyday played the game — the bad-faith accusations, Manicheanism, the shrill partisanship — and played it well, reaching its apex soon after the Lewinsky/Clinton affair and has been in decline² ever since. The “progressives”³ do it as well, and its apex is occurring as we speak. I don’t know that its magnitude is greater (worse?) now; it’s just louder, due to their having a high concentration of like-minded people in the media and the wider availability of said media.

But all of a sudden today — I don’t know whether it was the Côtes-du-Rhône or depressed levels of fighty-fighty-fighter hormones — I’ve begun to reevaluate things. The loss of choice you experience when you live this way is a high price to pay for the small bursts of gratification gained from tribalistic ritual, which is every bit as formulaic and predictable as today’s political commentary, especially that spawned from this medium, the blog. I think that I’ve adjusted upward the price that I’m willing to pay for that loss of freedom and the usually-fleeting satisfaction of kicking people I don’t like in the head.

Some — a larger share in blogdom — are more than happy to pay that price. I’m not. I want to live where I choose, associate with whom I choose, work where I choose (and where my employer will choose to have me, of course), go where I choose, buy what I choose, and write what I choose.

That’s not to say that I won’t have weak moments and kick someone I don’t like in the head anyway. We all do that.

If you want to pay that price and join the mob, be my guest. I don’t.

I’ll probably elaborate on this theme further once I get my thoughts together again.

1. I don’t shrink from these feelings or any other dark part of my personality. I simply feel them and try to get over them quickly. [↩]
2. due to the movement being left in the hands of dunderheads. [↩]
3. I always include this in quotes because among its connotations are “inventive” and “forward-thinking”, and today’s “progressives”, which are basically warmed-over ‘68ers, are neither. [↩]

I drove by Churchill’s in Topeka on the way home from work to see what it was about, but didn’t have time to go in. Anyone know what their selection of pipe tobacco is like?

I’m probably one of ten people in this city that smokes a pipe and prefers it to almost all other forms of low-grade vice (especially cigarettes, which I hate).

Centro Cigars here in Lawrence has turned me on to some good stuff, but they’re a cigar store, and as I said demand in this city is low, so their selection is small. I’m thinking of turning to online retailers. Are there any varieties I should look to try?

update: While we’re dilettanting up the place, let me say that my favorite wine is Cote du Rhone, and that I wish I had another bottle of it right now.

I’m still not voting for Republicans this time, but the pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as the Republican nominee for Vice-President pleases me for one reason and one reason only [italics original, bold mine]:

That point’s metastasizing already, in fact, into an argument that picking Palin actually proves McCain’s contempt for women voters insofar as it shows he thinks they’re automatons who’ll vote on the basis of gender and nothing more. That’s pure garbage — the near-hysterical enthusiasm on the right today proves her appeal goes deeper than her sex — but I’m positively aching at the thought of our nuanced left affecting high dudgeon for the next two months over, of all things, identity politics. You turds invented this game. Don’t cry because you’re suddenly getting beat at it. When Hillary stops making “plantation” references to the GOP on MLK Day, Palin will stop pitching herself to women voters, how’s that?

So there’s the pessimism. Now the praise: Not only is this the most galvanizing pick Maverick could have made, but the thought of watching progressives tie themselves in knots over the next two months trying to square the inevitable attacks on the “bimbo” beauty queen with poor, poor Hillary’s sexist treatment by the media is worth it even if [Republicans] lose.

Bring on the storm. I loathe identity politics and its practitioners. Everybody’s doing it these days, but I think most people¹ realize that it has benefited one side (with some imaginative help from its co-partisans in the media), and like with most one-sided, devastating weapons, total war is the only thing that will cause the weapons to be put away for good.

So bring it on.

On the bright side, we have some brand new opponents to “affirmative action”.

I think this just might make politics fun for me again.

1. with a functioning brain and pair of eyes, which narrows the field quite a bit, I’ll admit. [↩]

I see that Mythbusters has decided to take on the moon-landing Truthers, assuming there are any still alive.

I wish they would take on the 9/11 Truthers, but they won’t, mostly because the show is a light-hearted one and the subject matter too somber for such a show. However, I can’t think of a group of people more sorely in need of a boot of reason to the ass.

…anything going on tonight?

So I’ve got some extra money this month. The first Friday of the month I got my second-to-last paycheck from my previous employer, also known as the University of Kansas.¹ The next week, I got my first paycheck (for half a pay period, one week) from my current employer. The week after that — last Friday — I got my last paycheck from my previous employer which included a buyout of my vacation time, making this check roughly equal to a month’s pay. This week, I’ll get my first full check from my current employer.

Therefore, I’m relatively flush with cash. This isn’t a post about how cool I am; I’m looking for some recommendations. I’ve already decided that the extra money is going into savings for a possible down payment on a house somewhere in evolution’s fading empire, but I have my eye on a few things if that doesn’t work:

• A Sirius Stiletto 2 — That’s the Sirius handheld player. I’ve heard some things about weak signal quality, and I don’t even know if I could get signal at all at work, making it rather pointless if I couldn’t.
• An LCD TV — 1080p of course; I don’t need a huge one. I’d be willing to settle for something 40-42″. Recommendations welcome.

1. I only divulge the name of my employer after I’ve already left. [↩]