The impetus to kick off another blog (my 2nd on WordPress, and 6th or 7th if you add in Blogger to the tally), is where we are today, the 10th day of the Trump American Imperium™.
I am no stranger to political protest and resistance. Starting with Bush the First and the skullduggery of Edwin Meese, through the first Iraq mess, and on to the ‘Battle in Seattle’, I’ve been making my views publicly known. The 21st century has seen my activism shift from cautious Resister to impassioned Communicator (http://storyofstuff.org/uncategorized/changemaker-types/), and I have taken primarily to Facebook and Blogger to express my views.
The last time pointed resistance felt necessary, I was still maintaining a personal website (http://web.archive.org/web/20040608101248/http://www.speakeasy.org/~mjc/). This was before I had the substantial concern of protecting and providing for a family, which figures heavily into avoiding frontline confrontation, not to mention my more isolated surroundings in southwest Montana.
While Obama certainly engaged in neoliberal, centrist, and questionable escapades, he always struck me as well-intentioned, thoughtful, and morally grounded. He did more things I agreed with than any other president since Jimmy Carter, who also remains the only other president during my lifetime I consider worthy of my respect. Outright protest and ongoing resistance didn’t feel required through most of his 8 years.
I’m starting this blog because I’ve concluded we may soon be living in a quasi-dictatorship, where corporate concerns like Facebook will either fall into line behind our Wannabe Emperor PsychOTUS, cowed into submission and conformity to avoid his presidency-empowered wrath, or resist in the interest of self-preservation and strategic positioning. I don’t pretend that most corporate interests will behave primarily in the interest of social justice, as all corporations are fundamentally amoral entities.
I feel pretty sure in saying that ‘content’, aka my ponderings and efforts to increase awareness, will disappear for political reasons from individual social media bubbles, so it seems prudent to post the important stuff in multiple forums. I’ve also been thinking about making what I’ve learned during my nearly two years as the #techmountainman more publicly available; anything that allows others to improve their self-reliance safely and economically is worth sharing. Any posts dated earlier than this one will be to maintain the chronological logic of stuff I bring over from other sites. I hope you’ll drop by now and then.
TechMountainMan 