The Echo Chamber
March 21st, 2007 by GoldFalcon
I started this blog almost four years ago. The site itself (goldfalcon.org) was started even before that as a way to communicate with other paratroopers who had served with the 4th Battalion 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division (The Gold Falcons).
In time the blog took over as the major function of the site and the purpose of both the blog and the site took on a decidedly political bent. This, in and of itself, is not a problem. I enjoy the parlor game of politics just as much as the next American and I am decidedly conservative in my leanings –unabashedly so. But the fact is that the blogosphere is an echo chamber, and a decidedly insular one at that. Over the course of time I found that I grew tired of simply commenting on all of the political cause celebre’s that cropped up in the course of the day: I wanted to generate original content.
The problem became that the things that I wanted to talk about didn’t seem to fit within the blogosphere Band of Buddies that I had accumulated. I didn’t particularly want to rage against the Dying of the Conservative Light and add my silly trackback to every article written by every other citizen journalist pounding out anti-leftist screeds with a cheroot in their mouths and a pint of scotch on their desks.
So I began to talk about art, and music, and cinema, and literature, and golf, and was met with a resounding “Why?”
I wrote a song that resonated with a lot of conservatives who became disappointed when a) I wanted to talk more about my songwriting than politics, and b) the rest of my songs were not Toby Keith-esque.
The end result of all of this is that I quit blogging.
I didn’t feel the need to add one more shrill voice to the din.
But blogging is two things: self-expression and an exercise in vanity and I am inexorably drawn to the former and constantly engaged in the latter so I cannot long be free of it.
This is my space; my own. I will write what I care to write, say what I care to say, ignore what I care to ignore and cover what I choose to cover and the rest of ye be damned.
Be advised that I might decry taxes, the drug war, ASCAP, and film colorization in the same day. This ain’t no political blog no more and I refuse to be constrained.
This is the blog of a conservative, libertarian, socialist, former paratrooper, artist, musician, writer, father, golfer, VW driver, and non-practicing Evangelical. I will discuss those matters and more at length when I choose and how I choose. If that eventually leads to readership then so be it; but I refuse to be part of the Trackback Echochamber Look-At-Me culture anymore.
