for the first time in three years, i'm teaching a composition course this summer. in six weeks, i'm attempting to cover roughly the same curriculum under this course's regular semester-long plan, with minor exceptions. one week and two days into the session, things seem alright.
i've graded two papers just now. time to be all reflective and stuff. time to take a break and flip a different cerebral switch.
one direction this blog may take from time to time aims at --no, dave, no!-- politics. i feel like i should put a helmet on before i head this way...
as a teenager, i was first a dogmatic leftist. my skateboard in hand, i proudly stomped about in combat boots and an anarchy-sign adorned jean jacket...
black flag, the dead kennedys, and minor threat gave me my anthems, and authority was there to be ignored (skateboarding is not a crime). (look, honestly, i was also band president, so this was a pretty safe punk ethos, but, man, was i hardcore).
then, i found rush limbaugh. i listened, and i ditto'd. i even met pat buchanan during the primary season that preceded the 92 presidential election.
ok. as an undergraduate at a small liberal arts college i unlearned both of my political phases. i became, like everyone else, it seemed, a "moderate."
and then i stopped voting. adopted an aggressive indifference (a blog name!) about the american political scene and all its symptoms. proudly argued against the futility of "my one vote." dismissed the sincerity of my college democrat and college republican friends who actually believed in their respective allegiances.
fast forward (yes, let's) to last fall. now, i'm most certainly left-of-center (hard not to be, given where "center" seems to have found itself) (look, i know that all this "left," "center," "right" business is crazily reductive). i was still able to hang on to my no-vote stance, because the status quo in my state matched pretty well with my views. and then, it happened. maryland went and got itself a republican governor.
so i've started reading. i pay attention to the conservative argument again. often, the only real effect is an elevated blood pressure, particularly given the... well... screed to wade through in order to get to the point. i'm not really sure if i'm getting anything at all from being yelled at by hannity or o'reilly (obvious enough, i guess). and i DO NOT imagine that my reaction to that sort of vituperation means anything to anyone but me. but it strikes me as plain naive to pretend that the reasoning behind the right's rant is just stupid knuckle-dragging, antagonistic selfishness. the national review's staff may get my stomach all knotty, but i'd be a stupid knuckle-dragger to write their material off as stupid knuckle dragging (although buckley's "onward, christian soldiers: evangelism in iraq" evokes shades of ann coulter's compassionate christianity).
and yet, i think i may, from time to time, offer my own very quiet reaction to the assertive assertions that seem to be re-defining (oh, come on, dave, you're at least two years behind!) the grossly either-or state of american politics.
or i might go grade another paper...
Posted by dave at June 10, 2003 10:31 PM | TrackBack