OK, I was – briefly – using this blog for one of my business ventures, but I’m reclaiming it as my space online. I need somewhere to just be me.
Yeah, I got sucked in to social media, and didn’t we all stop blogging1 when Facebook came along? And aren’t we all now regretting it?
Yes. Yes, we are.
So I’m back, baby.
This blog is rebooting partly in response to this reel (probably originally a TikTok) in which Kris points out that the bare minimum we should be doing right now is journaling about what is happening.
Why?
Why journal?
Because even if we don’t DO anything, these first-hand accounts really will be studied by historians (given half a chance).
And that really matters.2
The opinions of people living through history absolutely shape the story of our times, as researched and interpreted by future historians.3
(At least, they do right now, and I cannot imagine that–when the current fashion for autocracy inevitably abates–this will not be true in future.)
So. Blogging.
Because my private journals are private, but this blog has always been largely public.
Things That Outraged Me Yesterday
Digitally leafing through The Gruniad yesterday I saw several things that made me want to lose my lunch.
- Trump said Ukraine and Russia should negotiate a peace that involves Russia taking over Ukraine’s territory and Ukraine NOT joining NATO.
- Of course. That makes total sense. Because if Canada suddenly annexed Washington State and started bombing everything in the region, we would think it was an excellent solution for the US to cede the territory and capitulate, and also to stop trying to strengthen our defenses against future aggression by allying with sympathetic neighbors who value the same kind of political structure we do. (Even if Canada offered us cheap medicines and accessible healthcare, I’m not sure you could get many US citizens to see that as a reasonable exchange.)
- Fortunately lots of European governments (who have more on the line, being, you know, geographically next in line for any Russian expansion plans) are telling Trump where to put his half-baked, ridiculous suggestions and that maybe he should butt out instead of talking on behalf of a country he has no business speaking for.
- Tulsi Gabbard has been confirmed as intelligence head (with Mitch F’n McConnell as the sole Republication objection. Great thundering turds, don’t make me like Mitch McConnell!) despite ‘fears of a pro-Russia stance’.
- You’re going to see me quote the Guardian a lot, because I read it and trust it, but good Lord, Gruniad Headline Writer: “Fears of a pro-Russia stance”?! Burying the lede much? This is a woman who met with genocidal war criminal and famously Russian-backed dictator Bashar al-Assad, in Syria — a man who attacked his own people with chemical weapons among other things; freely spread Russian propaganda on X/Twitter a thing that even Fox f’n News admits gave succour and aid to the Russians (not an ally of the US. I think they used to have a name for this sort of behaviour. Starts with T…)4. “Fears of a pro-Russia stance”?! This person is now in charge of US Intellegence.5
- Trump has been appointed as Chair of the Board of The Kennedy Center.
- I admit, this one seems less important but Jumping Josephat! How did that even happen?! So quickly?!
- And, side note: NOT unimportant: The Kennedy Center was set up as a national cultural center. A man who is centralizing power in his hands has has himself appointed to lead the organization tasked with championing the arts…when we all know that the loudest and most effective voices in opposition to autocracy are the artists. Silencing the intellectuals is up there in the Ten Commandments of the Aspiring Dictator (see: Chinese Cultural Revolution and how that worked out. If you want to get a sense of how it felt read the opening of The Three Body Problem or Wild Swans).
- Also: how can a man with absolutely no sense of humor, who has never been seen to laugh, possibly be in charge of the organization that bestows the Mark Twain Prize?
And that was just one day.
Things That Made Me Happy
- Chris Murphy, US Senator for Connecticut
- Walt Hampton posting (on The Other Bad Place) about the importance of not looking away
- Snow and the shoveling of it
That’s it for today.
I’m not going to be able to keep up this pace6, but I’m not going to be able to survive if I don’t have somewhere to put this stuff.
This is not OK.
I don’t know what to do about it…yet. But my instinct is to notice, to document, and to write about it. So that’s what I’m doing.
(< waves > hi, future historians!)
- No, we didn’t all stop blogging. I see you, sitting smugly over there saying, “Well actually, I never stopped blogging, because I could see that you were all fools being sucked in by the megalomaniacs, and you all thought that I was paranoid, but who’s paranoid now, Suckers?! ↩︎
- I know. I have an MA (Hons.) in History from the University of Edinburgh and did a lot of research using primary sources. ↩︎
- Contrary to the old saw “history is written by the victors”. Not any more, whoever first said this thing that evolved into an old saw and is usually erroneously attributed to Churchill. Back in the dark ages (the early 1990s) when I was studying, the Subaltern Studies folks had already rocked the world of history research by actually listening to the people at the grassroots level, who lived through history, and it was one of the reasons I dropped English Lit to spend more time with the real people of world history for the final two years of my degree. Nothing but History, baby! All day, every day. ↩︎
- just in case, here’s a screenshot ↩︎
- Cue European jokes about US Intelligence in the vein of ‘Military intellegence’… ↩︎
- I don’t know how Heather Cox Richardson does it. #Hero ↩︎
