Post #419: Six Years and Counting

Early on the morning of 2 June 2006, I received an e-mail from a woman who had read some of the comments I had been making on the deliciously subversive website AlterNet. She told me that my writing wasn't that bad and that I should start my own blog. I replied that I wasn't very computer savvy and that doing so might prove to be problematic (Truth be told, I wasn't even sure what the heck a "blog" was). She responded by telling me that it was easy. "Just go to blogger.com", she told me, "They'll walk you right through it". I did. Within twenty minutes I had my first article posted, a little introductory salutation called, "George W. Bush: The Last Republican President". That woman's name has been forever lost to me. Pity. I owe the gal an awful lot.

On June 2, 2006 I didn't really believe that Bush would be the last Republican president. That title was just a combination of cheekiness and wishful thinking on my part. Then, sometime last year, I began to believe it. That party has lost its mind, I thought to myself. They'll never sleep in the White House again. I believed it until the moment recently when GOP governors across the land simultaneously began to wage a phoney war on the non-existent plague of "voter fraud", disenfranchising the ballots of the traditional progressive constituency - blacks, Hispanics, city dwellers, the elderly, college students - the usual suspects.

I'm now almost convinced that Mitt Romney is going to be the next president of the United States. That's okay. The lower this doomed country sinks into the socio-economic/ideological cesspool, the higher my stock rises. Give me a bushel of nasty tasting lemons and I'll whip you up a pitcher of juicy lemonade.

So here we are: six years into what started out as a lark and became - within a matter of days - a habit more powerful than heroin. This may sound a bit strange, but while the complete and utter destruction of this once-great nation has been a terrible thing to behold, it sure has been loads of fun to write about. So much unintentional humor! Sometimes these things virtually write themselves. There is an ambivalence in doing what I do that is impossible to put into words, so I won't even attempt to do so here. Why bother.

I'll just end this little diatribe by saying that, while I always believed I could draw a handful of readers, the modest success of "The Rant" has been a pleasant surprise. Thanks for reading these spasmodic ramblings of mine for the last six years, folks. God willing, I'll be able to keep churning them out for another six years....Let me rephrase that....God willing, I won't be churning them out six years from now. Hopefully I won't need to. If the day ever arrives when human beings become polite, loving and generous toward one another, I'll have to start looking for real work. McDonald's perhaps.

In the meantime....

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

AFTERTHOUGHT:

I always forget to plug The Rant's Facebook page. Here it is:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Rant-by-Tom-Degan/332888152922

Please "like" it. I have no life.

SUGGESTED READING:

The Last Word
by George Carlin and Tony Hendra

Carlin's posthumous memoirs. As only George could write them.