Who's this dude, and what's he doing here?

Bill has graciously offered me the chance to share "peripatic patter" with him, and with much trepidation, I have accepted.

I'm an old Army buddy of Bill's – we went to the same training posts (though not concurrently) and spent about a year and a half together at the same duty post in beautiful rural Bavaria, doing the same job. We went our separate ways after we separated from the military, but I ran up on him again, I guess a couple of years ago now, on a "social media" site (which will remain nameless and which I no longer frequent); since then, we've been gradually rebuilding our friendship, via email discussions of this and that. (Bill's living in Texas, and I'm in Kentucky, so it's reasonably unlikely we'll ever meet in person again - but one never knows, does one?)

He appears for all the world [grin] to have maintained the sharp, alert, open-minded outlook he had in our glory days, and, to his eternal credit, he's still interested in the wider, and more important, deeper perennial issues we used to gnaw over. He has also flattered me by asserting that he thinks I have (shall we say) interesting things to say about stuff, which I guess is what led to his invitation. Anyhow, for better or worse, here I am.


But here's where the trepidation comes in. As I've related to Bill, I harbor deep misgivings (to put it mildly) about blogging and "the blogosphere." My own view is that nearly all blogs are very shallow and hopelessly ephemeral, tending to deal with some issue du jour, as often trivial as not, in sound-bite and bumper-sticker terms. This seems to be to be a terrible waste: The 'Net, and even the now nearly hopelessly commercial Web, offers hillbillies and cowboys like me and Bill, and everybody with access to even free public library computers, a priceless opportunity to seriously discuss with and learn from each other the things that are important to us in the terms we understand and that have meaning for us, without being confined to what some talking head or think tank thinks is important. From Bill Greider, Who Will Tell The People:

Strange as it may seem to an era governed by mass-market politics, democracy begins in human conversation. The simplest, least threatening investment any citizen may make in democratic renewal is to begin talking with other people about these questions, as though the answers matter to them. Harmless talk around a kitchen table or in a church basement will not affect anyone but themselves, unless they decide that it ought to. When the circle is enlarged to include others, they will be embarking on the fertile terrain of politics that now seems so barren.

A democratic conversation does not require elaborate rules of procedure or utopian notions of perfect consensus. What it does require is a spirit of mutual respect — people conversing critically with one another in an atmosphere of honesty and mutual regard. Those with specialized expertise serve as teachers, not commanders, and will learn themselves from listening to the experience of others. The respect must extend even to hostile adversaries, since the democratic objective is not to destroy them but to reach eventual understanding. At its core, the idea of democracy is as simple as that — a society based on mutual respect.

This obvious human quality, seemingly available to all, is what's missing from American politics, drenched as it is in mass manipulation and deception and sour resentments. Indeed, mutual respect, above and beyond the usual social and economic distractions, is missing from the general fabric of American life. A society that regularly proclaims democratic pieties also devotes extraordinary energy and wealth to establishing the symbols and trappings of hierarchy, the material markings that delineate who is better than whom.

Now, Bill and I, though probably in general agreement about, especially, the value of everyday, anonymous "unimportant" people, differ enough in our approaches (Bill, it seems to me, fits well enough into the "progressive" mold [though that observation could lead to our first debate], while I tend much more to something like anarcho-syndicalism) to create a sort of tension or space that could be most amenable to serious, in-depth debate and fruitful discussion.  I don't mean at all to imply that this should be between Bill and me; quite the contrary, I should be most gratified to see people from whatever perspective jump in with their $.02 worth - the more the merrier. But, unless you're an intrepid soul, leave your glib sound-bites wrapped up tightly in your rhetorical toolbox, or I, at least, shall jump ruthlessly into your shit. In any case, even if it turns out to be just Bill and I, that'll be OK, too.

This screed has gone on far too long. I didn't mean for it to be this lengthy, but I get, frequently enough, virulent attacks of soapbox-itis. If it starts to get on your nerves, just rap me on the knuckles, or hit me between the eyes with a 2X4, or something, and just I'll go away and pout for a while.