I speak because I can

Being a great lover of song lyrics, I thought I'd try to give my blog a snazzy, catchy song lyric for a name. The best I could come up with so far is this one, from REM's "Bad Day," an anthem about the dire state of the news. I think it decries the sort of sensationalist journalism that we as a nation have returned to the past decade or so: non-news dominates for hours at a time, news is doused in a healthy coating of opinion before it's repackaged as news like so much processed meat food being shoveled down the indiscriminately ravenous American gullet. Rather ironically, it premiered on CNN a few years ago.

It's partly the state of the news that made me want to start this blog. I've become increasingly disgusted by the asinine material that gets counted as news these days, and with the way it's presented on nearly every outlet. To that end, one of the stated goals of this blog is going to be to bring all the skills of an English master's student to bear on the news. I want to look critically at things, see what the news is saying beneath what it's saying. Unfortunately, I don't have cable, so I can't watch FOX News or CNN (and just how sad it makes me I am completely unable to articulate...). What i'm left with is Internet news (from their websites) as well as the local paper, which I'm planning to take out a subscription to, if it's not outrageously expensive. Activism on a budget, and all. My university also puts out a bi-weekly newspaper which I'll try to pick up when I can. That's always a fun one. Also, any time I write a blog about something in a paper, I'm going to email it to the new agency in question. I doubt that they'll publish any of it, but it will make me feel better, and they might at least read it.

I don't aim for this blog to be focused solely on politics, though. That gets old after a pretty short while, and I'd like to intersperse it with things that interest me generally (and critically). Other blogs, websites, TV shows that I totally watch legitimately. Anything goes, though the focus will probably be a bit narrower than I would prefer, simply due to me having lots to do and being generally forgetful when it comes to blogging.

It comes down to wanting to do something, really. It's not just the news that I've been disenchanted with lately, it's America as a whole. Well, no, not as a whole—but a large majority of it, and I don't just mean conservatives. I have equally incisive things to say about liberal/progressives as well, though perhaps fewer of them overall. I feel like we as a society are not headed in a very good direction. Not to sound overly apocalyptic, but some sort of major change is going to come in the not-too-distant future, that will probably change us forever. I'm under no illusions that I can change this, and I'm not even sure that I want to. But I simply cannot abide not saying anything. And why shouldn't I? There is little else that I can do. The old adage says that actions speak louder than words, but I think we can agree that that's not true in the slightest. Words are actions, but actions are not words. It is words, and not actions, which elects presidents, hoists dictators, and topples regimes. Actions have a time and a place, but we are not there yet. Revolutionary actions are always preceded by revolutionary words. Not that I fancy myself a revolutionary—just a guy with opinions that thinks they're not the most terrible opinions anyone has ever had, and thinks that people would benefit from a nice healthy does of logic and compassion.

So here goes.