Political Blog

This blog is where I express my left-wing views as I follow the political news. Well, most of the content is not so much my views as shameless parroting of every other left-wing pundit out there, but I'm something of a left-wing pundit in my own right (right? How can a language as vast as this one not have enough words?). That is, I regularly annoy the shit out of my friends by spouting left-wing propaganda, so I've decided to stuff my website with it as well.

I've been interested in left-wing politics ever since I can remember. It's hard to say what triggered it— Receiving a stuffed Opus for my fifth birthday and being raised on Bloom County and Doonesbury probably something to do with it, not to mention hearing constant praise of FDR from my grandparents, but even without those influences, I probably would have been a leftist anyway. I tried to get the other kids in my kindergarten class to vote for Dukakis in the class election, I was livid as shit when my aunt sent me to a private school full of rich kids, and I became a huge fan of Stephen Hawking when I found out he'd once scrawled "Vote Liberal" on a bridge in Oxford (I then promptly proceeded to do the same in marker on my backpack, but without the disciplinary ramifications).

I decided I was an atheist when I was about thirteen, and I never bothered to conceal it, which necessarily led to me being ostracized by the religious kids at school. Thusly I mostly associated with other irreligious people, many of whom were leftists. Around the same time period, I saw a documentary about the Beatles and became a fan, especially of John Lennon and his rebellious nature and wit. That predictably led to me hearing the inevitable comparisons drawn between him and Kurt Cobain. I read the book Never Fade Away, about Cobain's background, and became interested in gay rights, something the late Cobain had supported.

A couple of years later, I learned about the Vietnam War in school, also learning about protest songs. Holiday in Cambodia in particular became one of my all-time favorite songs. I started listening to punk rock and loved its free, unstructured sound and the unconventional antics of its performers and followers. Much of what I heard was political in nature, and I took an interest in the topics featured in the songs. I'm still a huge fan of Jello Biafra, plus I've discovered Anti-Flag, Consolidated, and a host of others since then.

Meanwhile, I was growing ever more interested in atheism. One of my favorite TV shows was the British comedy Waiting for God, featuring an elderly woman who was an avowed atheist with strong left-wing tendencies. I adored her dark cynicism and uncompromising insistence on fair treatment.

By the time I got to college, I'd become thoroughly committed to the Left, growing only more so when I took Professor Bob Jensen's Journalism 310 class. We read a lot of Chomsky's material for class, and the professor found himself embroiled in controversy after September 11th, when he published an editorial featuring his views on United States foreign policy.

Around this time period I began dating a Republican, for the first and last time. He actually worked on the Bush campaign. He would not stop trying to change my political views (along with everything else), which was a major factor in our breakup. I've since learned only to date leftists, since centrists are too moderate for me, and the dullness of apolitical guys is far too aggravating for my rabid tendencies.

Inevitably, I decided to start a politics section of the site. As I observed on the index page when I first got the idea, "my idea of a section for political pontificating is less 'a small series of sound bytes expressing my opinions and tastes' and more 'a blatantly plagiarized blurb where I shamelessly use myself as a mouthpiece to parrot everything every left-wing pundit on MSNBC has already said,' but it's my website and I can do whatever I damn well please."

So. I posted links to the calendar pages of the politics blog at the top of the page. Most of the entries feature condensed versions of the news; all of them contain my opinions. Some of them might surprise you—After all, even for a rabid leftist, I am eccentric.