What's a Blog, Again?

Why I Do What I Do

(A post for Reconstruction Journal:

http://reconstruction.eserver.org/)

I started my blog my accident, two years ago, when I was trying to comment on Pete’s blog. Pete used to run the Dark Window. I still miss Pete.

I keep on blogging because I keep having things to say. I forget which blog it was that said a blog was a little First Amendmant machine – Lawyers, Guns, and Money, maybe? – but this is so. Once upon a time in America to be heard by any audience at all you had to command a printing press, or a sizeable amount of money, or to be connected to someone who could get your words in print or over the airwaves or on film. Now, well, all you need is a computer. And some luck at getting linked, of course. (Where are all the feminist bloggers, huh?)

I blog because, here in the 21st century, America is not the utopian paradise it was supposed to be. Remember that? Do you remember that? We are supposed to be a more perfect union. I was reminding my freshmen of that this morning in class. No, I said to them: No, no, no, no. This is, in fact, America. We are, in fact, supposed to be created equal here. It is not, in fact, all right for us to treat some people as though they were somehow lesser beings – he’s not a citizen, so we can torture him? That’s an illegal immigrant, so I can do what I want? That’s not what we do here. This is America, I told them. That’s supposed to mean something! We are meant to have justice here! This is supposed to be the place where everyone is free and equal!

Right, one of them answered back. More perfect union, and all that.

And all that: that is why I blog.

Because “and all that” has not yet happened.

I am here to help bring that world.