I'm basically an amateur blogger. I make no real effort to enlarge my public profile any more than how it currently stands (and frankly I am amazed that I have had as many views as I have on this Opera blog).
But there are plenty of others for whom blogging is clearly a life mission! I was reminded of this by today's Washington Post article on angry, left-leaning bloggers. In the past I paid little attention to political blogs, not least because many of the earlier and best known ones were rabid right-wing polemicals (and revolting to read), but, as this article points out, there are now a good number of similarly incensed left-wing bloggers in the U.S.
The article concentrates on one of the angriest, My Left Wing, that I had paid no attention to whatsoever before, so I took a look.
I was expecting to be turned off by the strident tone, but frankly it was very heartening to read rants such as these that I have no difficulty empathizing with.
Not sure if it makes me feel any better in the long run, though. Righteous anger is still anger, and it is not a good emotion to sustain over any length of time in my opinion. I prefer moderation both in tone and action.
Plus, life itself is too complex to reduce to rants, be they from the left or the right. Not that one should sit back and let clear injustice or foolishness go unchecked. But one should aim to restore balance; not simply replace one extreme with another.
On the other hand, sometimes it takes a bit of fire to stir people into any action at all. At the very least, it is heartening to see that boiling passion is not the sole property of the right (as it often seemed to be in this country over the past 20 years).
Everything has it´s time and place.I am a very serious person – when children I know are being hurt. When I´m blogging, I´m merely playing, though.
Personally, I think that is absolutely the right attitude. But it is quite clear from a good number of the political blogs that it has gone beyond playing for the authors. Perhaps that is why the political blog is starting to get real attention from those who are actually in power. It's a fascinating phenomenon.
I totally agree with you. Great post!Ravo
I also read the bit in the Washington Post, which I found (appropriately enough) through a blog entry about it. It's more about the sorry state of the media and the current "culture war" we're having than it is about anger, though.