This Blog, and Why Palin

You may read the posts on this blog and sense a level of bias. That's fine. Everyone has implicit bias, and I don't deny my own. But let's be clear - I'm not writing about conservatism and conservative/evangelical culture just to pick on it. I'm writing about it because I know it, inside and out, upside down, rightside up, and back and forth. I've spent most of my 47 years immersed in it. That's a lot of years, a lot of miles, a lot of experience. I'm not shooting from the hip or speaking through partisan bias. I'm writing from those years, those miles, that experience.




Why Palin as part of the title and ambiance of the blog? That's easy. She's the flashpoint of everything that's wrong with conservative and evangelical culture and the GOP. She's the living moment in time when it became a bad thing to be smart, to think, to see a bigger picture other than that painted with the colors of a religious Armageddon. 

I registered as a Republican and first voted in 1988, faithfully voting GOP on the Presidential line and often a straight ticket on the ballot through 2004. When my party found it in their anti-intellectual hearts to nominate such a truly unexceptional person, a genuine dunce who knew nothing about nothing and wasn't bright enough to begin to understand how little she knew, 2008 became a watershed moment for me, where I had to look deeper, re-examine, and see if I still wanted to be associated with such an ideological trainwreck. Long story short, I didn't want to be. While hopefully Palin has been relegated to side-show status in American culture, and I don't have plans to write about her specifically (as of now, anyway), there may be references to her and the Tea Party calamity/phenomenon. Some reference to her seemed to be fitting for a blog title, especially considering how modern conservative culture must look to someone from outside the States.


I'm currently an Independent, and although I see the Democratic party now as far more humane and intellectually driven than the Republican Party in its ideals (hell, Sesame Street is more intellectually driven than the current GOP), I don't feel any particular fondness for or allegiance to it. 

What I write here will be raw, sarcastic, sometimes intentionally pointed, and hopefully thought-provoking. I write in real time, only when motivated or passionate about the subject, doing any necessary research beforehand, typing furiously with two fingers for an hour or two, then hitting publish.