Blogging During An Election Year

I began blogging in mid-2005, so this year is my first in the blogosphere during the run-up days to a National Election. What a frenzy! It's all about the election, all the time — or nearly so. Perhaps all general elections cause such turmoil on the web and elsewhere, and I simply didn't notice.
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Last week, a friend of mine in Moline, Illinois, phoned. He wanted to share with me some of the not-so-well-covered information on Barack Obama. This friend of mine — I'll call him Bill — doesn’t use the web at all. Instead, he relies on the mainstream media and word of mouth as his sources. Not unexpectedly, Bill didn’t have any information I didn’t already know. In contrast, because I surf the web every single day, I had some information he had never heard.

For example, I told Bill about the shutting down of Blog Talk Radio’s No Compromise When You’re Right, when Tracy, the show’s host, attempted to interview Phillip Berg, the attorney who brought the now-dismissed law suit with regard to Obama’s citizenship. Bill didn’t know the name “Berg,” but he had heard via word of mouth about the questions related to Obama’s eligibility for the office of President of the United States and asked, “Has Obama produced the proof that he’s eligible? Why is he not producing the proof? What about our Constitution?” The answers to those questions are either unavailable, from Obama himself, or the questions themselves are being disregarded altogether.

Prior to learning about some of the most disturbing facts about Obama – particularly the advocation of wealth redistribution – Bill, the owner of a small business, was undecided as to whether or not to vote for Obama because Bill is one of those independent voters about whom we hear so much. In fact, several months ago, he was going to vote for Obama, for change. Then Bill got a clearer idea of Obama's definition of change.

Bill particularly decried that almost any criticism of Obama is labeled as “racism,” a charge which Bill adamantly repudiates. Indeed, he is one of the most racially unbiased persons I know, ahead of his time in that regard even back in college some forty years ago. Yet, when he casually voices concerns about Obama to longtime friends who have always been open to reason, he faces the accusation of racism.

Like many of us in the blogosphere, Bill is concerned that during this election cycle we are seeing the attempted and the actual silencing of voices, including this recent purge of political reporters from Obama's airplane. Bill asks the same questions that many of us are asking. Whatever happened to a "normal" election and the usual dissension, an American tradition? How corrupt are the media, to show so brazenly their bias in favor of Obama? How much are the media controlling the information reaching the voters? How did so many Americans get to the point of venerating and following Obama as a messiah? Have people completely lost their minds?

By the end of the day on November 4, all ballots will have been cast, and the tallies will be calculated. It remains to be seen if the election results will be immediately finalized, however, thanks in part to the ACORN scandal. If major disputes and significant delays about the election results arise, then we will witness and likely participate in another frenzy in the blogosphere. And, of course, no matter how the election turns out, the media and the blogosphere will engage in Monday morning quarterbacking. Once again, for an indeterminate time, it will be all about the election, all the time.

Bill and I will talk again after the election. And I'll still be blogging — back to normal, whatever normal means on this web site.

No matter the outcome on November 4, we'll have another mid-term election in two years when the entire House of Representatives again comes up for re-election and will, once again according to the wisdom of our Founders, have to answer to the will of the us, We the People.