driftglass should get more traffic

* driftglass:

"In the Age of Dubya, the Party of God hasn’t just fallen down the rabbit hole, but has positively hurled itself down into darkness with JATO units strapped to their little, webbed feet to help rocket them to the bottom faster.

In the Age of Dubya, rabid weasels like Coulter and Hannity and Falwell speak for the Party and enforce Orthodoxy with a sledgehammer, and however untouchably revered (william) Buckley might have been in Conservative circles a week ago doesn’t matter. He can become just another Swiftboated unperson in the twinkling of an eye because in the Age of Dubya, Truth and Principle have long ago been bound and gagged and duct-taped into a duffle-bag in the trunk of the GOP Deathmobile...

Because in the Age of Dubya, you can either be a Good American, or a Good Republican, but you can no longer be both.

So file this under "Duh", and cross-index under, "Well you certainly took your sweet fucking time, didn't you?"

[snip - dg quotes from the instantly famous Buckley article]

And as a public service to those of you on-the-goers who don't want to wade into Buckleyese this afternoon, this shorter version of Big Bill's article:

As 49 million Americans warned you, the Dear Leader has now lied himself and this country right off the proverbial cliff Wile E. Coyote style.

And as 49 million Americans warned you, while the bizarre GOP strategy of simply refusing to look down and hoping that will keep us aloft might seem viable in cartoons or in your Jebus-For-Dummies anti-religion, it doesn’t actually work out here in the Real World where cause and effect will have its merry way with you every, single fucking time.

And now that Buckley can actually feel the wind from our accelerating fall whipping through his comb-over, he thinks maybe someone should maybe do something about it."

whenever i read driftglass, i honestly get overwhelmed by his writing - and i know that some of you feel the same. his prose, and insight, is mind-bogglingly exquisitely delicious. i'm tempted to say that he is a writer's writer, but that's a cliche, and i'm not a writer, so that would be a dumb thing to say.

if i was a writer, not only could i say that i was motivated to somehow emulate driftglass, but i could also say that i was motivated to be a writer for the sole purpose of trying to somehow-accurately describe driftglass' writing/impact. that would be motivation enough. you already know this.

yesterday i wrote a confused post-without-a-purpose where i ended up marvelling at the ability of A-list bloggers to keep track of stuff. i agree entirely with that sentiment, but what is much more amazing is the b-listers and c-listers who do much the same thing, with an audience in the tens, rather than the tens of thousands. i'm sure they all have different motivations but there are thousands of bloggers who, for whatever particular reason, do their tiny bit to contribute to the discourse - and they each deserve medals - for their efforts, if not their impact.

for my own part, i try to do a little bit of activism, and provide links to a bunch of other stories that i'm reading, and try to solve some of the mysteries of the day, and preach-to-the-converted, and a bit of this and a bit of that. but i dont really 'market' (with a couple of exceptions) any of the work that i do - so i guess that's a major shortcoming in any 'activism' that i purport to do... which is to contribute to saving the world in my own little way - and i note, there are thousands of other bloggers who try do the same, in exactly the same way - and we all live on the fumes of the odd comment hither and tither, and the odd hit, and the odd link and whatnot. it makes it all worthwhile - yep, we are all that cheap.

all of which is a really long-winded way of introducing this post by driftglass - where he gives a snapshot of his traffic figures (after getting a C&L link)


its incredibly sad that his traffic figures are so low, however he notes:

I understand and feel a particlar kind of sorry for people who chase the spike in any endeavor: the Ahabs, forever stalking their particular White Whale, because IMHO, nothing I know ever works that way.

Bill Macy didn’t get to be a star today based on "Fargo"; he got to "Fargo" and beyond by practicing his craft like any other working man. Asimov wrote a jillion books, one at a time, year after year. Hell, Lincoln lost every damned election ever until the big one.

There are people -- people I know -- who routinely wager large parts of their lives and futures on the Big Score, and it just never works out that way. And so I don’t know if its blog taboo (blogboo?) to flash one’s hitcount to the world (as if the world were watching or cared :-) but while a daily total of visitors is satisfying and I cherish the comments and emails I get, the number itself is not relevant to me one way or another; the process, the work and the people I get to interact with are what matter, so I posted it up here just to illustrate a larger point.

That anyone can hit it big on any given day, but the inflation of the moment has no nutritional value, and it evaporates like dew in a firestorm. What matters is the work, and the residue of what endures after a freak sunny day in February has gone. And my reason for using this, specific example during this political season is this:

It is especially important to remember over the next nine months that the world we living in and the nation we love will not be changed by massed millions in streets on a Sunday, but by a few hundred scattered here and there in polling places on a Monday.

That winning back our nation is the hard, steady, behind-the-scenes work of thousands of volunteers – and, yes, I’m looking at YOU -- that does not come with the sugar-highs of huge spikes and fanfares and giant novelty checks.

Because virtually nothing of value ever does.

We win this country back one vote and one voter at a time.

We will kick the everloving shit out of these people…if we can just get used to the fact that this is a game of inches and single digits. Marches and rallies and petitions and blogs and so forth are terrific and I’m all for them, but in the trenches of the political universe, damned good ass-whippings are administered in the aggregate on election day, and that aggregates comes in small, unspectacular increments.

Or, as Voltaire said, "No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible."

driftglass is correct, of course. he always is. there are thousands of c-list bloggers out there (including me) who, collectively, make an inch of a difference. I am blessed because my work, and my contacts, and my wonderful, amazing commentors, give us a chance to hit it outta the park - and we are really close...

but even if 'we' dont, somewhere, amongst the thousands of people who are trying to do the same thing, we'll find the piece of the puzzle that stops these fukkers. eventually, collectively, we'll stop them. i dont care if we've been barking up the wrong tree all this time - so long as there are others barking up different trees - eventually, one of us will break through - and that's the only thing that matters. if it happens to be 'me', it will only be because of the collective contribution of you guys, and same thing if it's larisa, or emptywheel, or scott, or glenn, or anyone else. it might even be someone wingnut - but it will only happen because we were collectively barking up trees, trying to find an answer.

i was 'interviewed' a while back because of the impeachment thing that i set in motion, and i made exactly the same point - there are thousands of us trying to find a way to break through the nonsense and eventually one of us will find a way through.

kudos, of sorts, to the people who set up the barriers to the truth, they've done an incredible job. 5 years ago i would have sworn black and blue that it wasnt possible. but we'll defeat them. eventually. we must.

to summarize this post, a) driftglass should get more traffic b) they have to kill me to stop me trying to stop them