Some straight talk on who I am, and why I'm not a political blogger
I don't know whether I've ever had what most people would consider a really normal life. There were issues during childhood which, I came to realize much later, had a profoundly traumatic effect, and probably account for the great difficulty I've always had in forming normal social relationships. I am not going to say any more about that here. Over the last few years, I have had professional help in exploring and overcoming the damage it did, but I'm not ready to spread it any further.
I at least had very good health until the early-onset arthritis hit. I still have no idea why it attacked me as early as it did -- some people are just unlucky. I needed my first hip replacement at age forty-seven, and the other one eight years later. Those operations preserved my ability to walk, but the arthritis damage has kept on progressing. I've mentioned from time to time that my hands and feet are quite disfigured, enough that it sometimes unpleasantly startles people who suddenly notice.
My life really changed in September of 2010, when my mother had a devastating stroke. She barely survived, but was no longer able to live independently. For the next nine years, my life almost entirely revolved around taking care of her. I visited her every day (except for a couple of short periods when medical issues prevented it), did all her shopping, drove her to appointments, festooned her apartment walls with signs reminding her of the essential things she could no longer remember on her own. After about seven years her mind deteriorated to the point where it was no longer safe for her to live in an apartment, and I had to move her to an elder-care facility with security and routine supervision. I still kept visiting her every day, having meetings with the management, keeping after them when I felt her care was not up to necessary standards. This sometimes involved substantial conflict.
She finally died in December of 2019, having lost the ability to speak and most of her memory some time earlier. But she always recognized me.
During most of that nine-year period, I was still doing full-time office work. Between that and taking care of her, I had almost no time or energy for anything else. What interpersonal connections I had, decayed and disappeared as I kept focused on my mother's needs while also struggling with the typical demands and idiocies of "normal" jobs. More than once, the stress involved brought me to the brink of suicide. Had it not been for my counselor, I'm sure I would actually have done it. I've suffered a chronic obsession with suicide ever since, to varying degrees.
My mother's death was devastating. We had always been very close, like best friends. Very soon after she died, the covid pandemic hit, driving me into another form of isolation for a further period of time. By the time conditions had returned to normal, I had gone for so long with almost no social interaction with people beyond the most trivial, that my ability to handle such interaction at all had seriously atrophied.
My reason for recounting all this is not to ask for sympathy (certainly there are people who have had worse), but to make it clear what kind of circumstances have dominated my life and consciousness and continue to do so. As long-term readers know, I have a wide range of interests in science, history, and other areas, and it's to those that my mind turns when it can spare the energy. All the stuff about Trump and elections and politics generally, which seems to totally dominate the minds of many bloggers, has never been anything more to me than distant background noise. I spent nine years watching the only person I've ever actually loved rot away mentally and die. Nothing else will ever hurt like that.
It's now more than six years since she died, and while the pain will never really fade, I have adapted to it to an extent. Social Security, Medicare, and a somewhat improved financial situation have finally allowed me to retire from work with a reasonable degree of security, if I'm careful. I'm not sure how long I'll live now -- sixty-five isn't really old by today's standards, but I'm starting to feel old. I certainly don't take a long remaining life for granted.
My point is, I've earned a few years of peace and quiet, however long I have left. For those who obsess about politics to the point that four out of five blog posts you write deals with it, who chew over every latest outrage Trump comes up with, who are always there for every march and rally, who treat every election as a hair-on-fire five-alarm emergency -- that's all fine, you do what you feel you must, but I cannot join you, and will not attempt to. Even if I had the energy for it, I am not going to spend the time I have left on that kind of wearisome drudgery and stress. I finally have the opportunity for some of that peace and quiet, and I'm going to take it.
I don't understand the mentality that always has US domestic politics at the back of its mind and treats everything else as some kind of indirect reference to politics or an excuse to bring it up, as if no other subject were worth talking about in its own right. I do not always have politics at the back of my mind. When I write about something else, I really am writing about that something else. It's not some kind of indirect reference to Trump.
My only reason for continuing this blog is to foster interactions with people who have the same kinds of interests and views as I do. I have zero interest in arguing with people about things and I've made that explicit.
I read about politics to the extent necessary to avoid becoming uninformed, but increasingly find myself avoiding many aspects of it. There are blogs, and other sites focused on art or other areas of aesthetics, where politics never comes up, or is even explicitly banned as a topic. Such parts of the net are an oasis to me, a refuge.
The political blogosphere includes some pretty nasty, intolerant characters, anyway. This is rather frequently forced on my attention. Their default response to any dissent from whatever rigid political orthodoxy they subscribe to is a barrage of insults and disdain. They don't want thought, they want one more interchangeable person marching in lockstep and chanting the same old slogans in unison. They are, in a certain sense, not conscious.
Recently I read a short poem by another blogger, evoking a harsh struggle with "awe and rage", with "pain and anguish". I left a comment along the lines of: "I don't know what specifically inspired this, but I understand the feeling". Another commenter, in an insulting tone, responded that of course you know what inspired it. I realized that he's one of those people for whom politics is a constant mental presence, for whom it's automatically obvious that any such negative emotions as the poem referenced must be something to do with Trump, politics, the same-old same-old, even though it didn't mention any of that. I don't understand that mentality. I never will.
I have made some contribution to the political struggle, by writing several posts pointing out the obvious errors of the left which make them vulnerable to losing what should be easily winnable elections -- the all-important elections which determine whether or not the left will get into power at all and be able to enact whatever agenda it has -- and suggesting how such errors can be corrected. I don't expect the hard-core ideological types to gain anything from reading such posts. Their thinking is too rigid to assimilate and consider any idea outside the orthodoxy they're committed to, and they can't seem to react in any way other than robotically re-asserting that orthodoxy. But I hope some people who are less ideological and less committed, but who still take an interest in politics, will find something worth thinking about there.
But that's the only kind of contribution I'm prepared to make. After all this time, I finally have a chance for a fairly stress-free life for a few years, and I'm going to take it. It's what my mother would have wanted, and it's what I've earned.
posted by Infidel753 at 4:05 AM
12 comments
