Cat got my tongue

Since returning from Jamaica a couple of weeks ago, I've found myself dumbstruck - blogwise, anyway. Like peddling a bicycle uphill and stopping long before reaching the top, I'm finding that picking up where I left off is considerably more difficult than I'd anticipated.

For the two and a half weeks I was gone, I gave barely a thought to politics. While the break was entirely welcome - perhaps even necessary - now that I'm attempting to reclaim my dusty little corner of Blogville, the feeling of being overwhelmed by everything is pervasive and hard to shake. Instead of looking a mere twenty feet beyond the front tire of my blog bike, I'm staring at the mountain and wondering what there is to be gained from making the tortuous trek to its peak.

And so I mow the yard or dig a flower bed or propagate some roses. I play with the dogs. I watch television. I disengage.

Looking at the mountain, I see a militarized, Constitution-less government run by small-minded, sexually repressed sickos who proudly hate approximately half the country and conduct themselves in accordance with that hate. Their allegiance is to a queer-hating, Arab-hating, liberal-hating God who - oh, by the way - approves of every individual act of hatred committed in his name.

America. The cop using a Taser to torture a pregnant woman because she refused to sign a speeding ticket. The Fascist Right closing ranks around the woefully corrupt Tom Delay. Congress making major cuts in Medicaid. Changing the rules to squelch dissent. The casual manner in which Americans accept murder, torture and self-destruction for empire. The impunity which infuses each and every action and inaction of the immortal King Bush and his malicious minions; the way they're never, ever called on anything by the lapdog corporate media or, God forbid, the cowardly, willingly corrupted Democratic Party. The astounding ignorance, hysterical fear and unbridled hubris of Bush's brainwashed supporters. And, finally, informed yet desperate people on the Left advancing the mistaken and very dangerous notion that neoconservatism is now, or soon will be, waning - a discouraging indication of how deep our river of denial runs.

I have said previously this blog was conceived as nothing more than a means of preserving my sanity, a way to avoid frequent bouts of rage and chronic despair by allowing a healthy outlet for my angst. It was also a training ground for my personal admonishment to write every day (though this wasn't confined to blogging).

Yet, having experienced the strange luxury of not blogging - of not forcing myself to look each day at the disemboweled guts spilling forth from the corpus of shared American ideals - I realize the reason I began blogging is no longer valid enough to justify the time a decent blog requires. For better or worse - overwhelmed or not - I've largely adjusted to the New America. Psychologically, from here on out, living amid the deafening roar in the near sterile cowling of The Machine is simply a matter of adapting to the downward spiral of socioeconomic and [anti]cultural trends.

Do I really want to be doing this, I asked myself. How many times - how many ways - can I say This is insane! on a near daily basis?

After some serious contemplation, I've concluded it just doesn't matter because (1.) silence is complicity, and; (2.) blogging irritates The Great American Elite. Those two points are impossible to refute, and while the prospect of quitting doesn't bother me, the notion of surrender - of silence - bothers me a great deal more than mere redundancy.

And on that note, I think I'm (finally) back from the dead.