Blogging for me began back in 2002. I occupied a cubicle in a soul-sucking job for a major disability insurer. Every minute I spent there was a minute I’d never recover. Fortunately, I didn’t invest  much energy into furthering Whitey’s corporate agenda and instead began planning my plan of exit.

A co-worker with topnotch design skills built a functional website at my behest. He never charged me a penny, either. The most important element of the site was that it including a blogging platform. As a writer looking to up my game and work on my craft, I was off to the races with a space to publish my own writing.

Since 2003, I’ve had several blogs including this one. My writing has been bylined in a host of print publications and online. I’ve hit the markers I set out for nearly 20 years ago.

Occasionally, I look back at something I wrote. The blog I maintained from 2004 until I launched this one in 2012, Words Matter, is still out there. Since I just completed rereading George Orwell’s dystopian classic, 1984, I was curious about what I might have picked up previously and perhaps noted somewhere.

Interestingly, these prior blog posts serve as a “trail of breadcrumbs” back to what I was thinking at the time. Just like in the present, I was concerned about the use of fear and hysteria (back in 2006) and also, the limbing of what is considered “proper” in what we are allowed to think and say. These are both central tenets to Orwell’s book that I’m amazed was written in 1949 and is still eerily relevant—just as if he’d written it last week.

In my blog post from 2006 at the Words Matter blog, I wrote this about fear:

Yesterday, while driving home from some appointments in Dover-Foxcroft, I was scanning the radio dial for something tolerable, or at least wouldn’t put me to sleep. For a five minute period, my better judgment took leave and I found myself listening to the demagoguery of Sean Hannity, during his afternoon exercise in right wing ideological indoctrination. This man is certifiably insane. His propaganda-laced tirades are lapped up eagerly by his brain-addled listeners, who subscribe to this kind of bigotry-infused and racist rhetoric. He was prattling on about the need for the U.S. to support their friends (in this case, Israel) in the battle against “Islamofascism,” a term invented by the haters on the right.

Fourteen years later, I could rewrite this, change a few names and terms and it would read this way to detail something that happened to me back in April. I haven’t looked back:

Last night, I watched Rachel Maddow like I’ve done for the past few years. I was looking for some television that might be tolerable in a wasteland of bad programming.

For a five-minute period, my better judgment took leave and I was listening to Maddow demagogue once again about Donald Trump and blaming him for his role in accelerating the spread of the coronavirus. This woman, fear-fogging and engaging in panic porn, seems to have taken leave of her senses. To be honest, she seems certifiably insane.

Her propaganda-laced tirade against the Orange Man (a soapbox she’s been on for weeks) is a nightly exercise in left-wing ideological indoctrination. This nightly drumbeat provided for acolytes on the left is clearly one reason for the ideological chasm between those on the left who worship at her feet and those on the right who can’t stand her nightly exercises, the equivalent of the daily hate directed against the enemies of Big Brother in Orwell’s 1984.

Tonight, I turned off MSNBC. I don’t think I’ll be watching Maddow and the network again.

The legacy media is now censoring what we’re allowed to read. So are social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. What are they afraid of? Why do they think we need them to be the arbiters of truth for us? What is the agenda behind sending information down the “memory hole”?

I honestly can’t answer those questions. I’ve been thinking about them quite a bit over the past few months. What I’ve done while pondering them is to seek out other sources of truth. Nothing is entirely unbiased: not MSNBC, Fox, or NPR. And yet, good liberals (some of them my friends) have told me time and time again that they listen to NPR because it’s “unbiased.” Bullshit on you!

Back to my theme of following my own writing trail to see how my thinking about things has evolved (or not), I wrote this post 9 years later about Orwell and the actual destruction of words, which is what occurs re: Newspeak in the novel.

I’m commenting (in my post from 2015) about Orwell and I note the specific section in the book where it’s found:

On page 45 (of my Signet Modern Classic version), Winston Smith, the book’s protagonist, is taking a lunch break during his work day at the Ministry of Truth. He runs into a colleague named Syme and they sit down at a table together in the canteen. Syme was the lexicographer who developed the language and dictionary of Newspeak. His job also involved destroying works. Syme would eventually be vaporized because he got on the wrong side of Big Brother. While orthodox politically, he was too smart for his own good—or too smart for the politically-correct Party types.

“How is the dictionary getting on?” said Winston, raising his voice to overcome the noise.

“Slowly,” said Syme. “I’m on the adjectives. It’s fascinating.”

The two exchange other pleasantries, while eating their bread and drinking the gin available. Syme speaks.

“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn’t only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is the opposite of some other words?”

Syme continues,

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end, we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”

I am careful what I share these days. That’s very different from when I first started blogging. I was fearless in what I wrote about because I didn’t give a damn who I offended or pissed off. I still don’t give two shits about that.

Here I sit, however, in the waning days of 2020. We now must contend with doxing and cancel culture. Everyone has an ideological axe to grind. And rather than simply agreeing to disagree with some semblance of civility, you must destroy anyone who doesn’t hold to your version of the truth. This “erasing” of contrary thought is very much what Orwell wrote about 70 years ago.

For that reason, I’m not going to share names or sites where I am now seeking alternatives to the biased legacy press. I’m also not going to share my theories about much of anything else. It’s one reason why I haven’t been my usual blogging machine and have limited the content I’ve posted. Then, there’s the desire to play guitar and write songs and prepare for some future opportunity to possibly perform again when we’re let out of our COVID cubbies.

I will simply say this to Facebook “friends” and others—I see you. I watch how you’ve gone off the rails and that your screeds and “expert” opinions are not rooted in science or fact. The people you mock and shame for alternative views are no less rational than you are. You tend to place a great deal of value on signaling your virtue. Your hate isn’t really becoming since you tend to like to talk about “love” and “kindness” but exhibit little of either. Do you feel me?

Often, I just look at you and think, “I don’t care if I ever see that person again.” And the beauty of COVID societal distancing is that I probably won’t have to rub elbows with you, unless we accidentally run into each other in the store or some other awkward place of meeting.

I played this song, “Flying Pizza” last Saturday night. The song is about just that kind of meeting when you wish that other person didn’t see you but they do, and you are forced to make that awkward small talk like “how’s your mom,” and “are you working the same place,” and on and on it goes. I like the band, the song, and like most of what I play, it’s rooted in personal experience or some element that’s meaningful.