Blogging Again

2016 was the last year I blogged on a somewhat regular basis. As you recall it was in 2016 that a minority of citizens elected Donald Trump President of the United States. Prior to that election and ever since, the internet, at least in the United States,  has been a hotbed of distasteful, disgusting hatred coupled with the notion of "alternative facts."




With so many voices out there spewing hatred, I was reluctant to continue blogging for fear I would be just another angry voice. Of course, I could choose not to be angry, but the fact is I was angry. I was angry that our country was systematically and at the highest levels rejecting our core values. 

Honesty, for example, became a joke. Our President would repeatedly lie to us, and his followers and political allies would just laugh it off as "Trump being Trump." I was angry when in the early days of the current administration I saw the President of the United States sharing confidential information with a Russian diplomat. But that was just the beginning of a series of embarrassing, uncaring actions that culminated in the practice of taking children from their parents and putting them in cages which DHS euphemistically labels care centers. At that point, I thought we were at the bottom, but then POTUS attacked our allies in Europe and NATO and went to Helsinki to play nice with Vlad Putin.

While I am still angry, I am an old man and refuse be caught up in the 24/7 news cycle and the clever distractions of Trump tweets or Russian bots. I will continue to be informed and attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff, but I do not intend to mud wrestle with neo-Nazis.  I will not throw mud on the white robes of the KKK; they have already soiled themselves.

What I will do is write about what interests me, whatever that happens to be at any given time. That may be religion, popular culture, sports, history, books, and yes, politics. I trust I will be able to refrain from hatred (Twitter and Facebook are better suited for that), but hopefully still retain a bit of sarcasm and satire.

That having been said, I am resurrecting Ron's Tidbits.

(If  I were honest, I would have mentioned the real reason I am returning to blogging: my wife told me to either go in the back room and write blogs or get a real job.)