Let's Try Some Good Nonsense for a Change

So many times in the last decade or so, watching the coups and near-coups that have been our politics and listening to the apologizers and the corkheads explain how it's all really okay and the system isn't really teetering on the edge, I've been reminded of what Will Rogers allegedly said, "Why, that ain't even good nonsense." I won't repeat what so many of the excellent bloggers, the Digbys and Greenwalds, the Mahablogs and Firedoglakes, have analyzed and demonstrated about the precipice at which we stand. The noted political philosopher Aaron Sorkin said it best, roughly "these are serious times and they require serious people." We haven't had serious people in DC or most state governments, certainly not in our media and academia and churches in a very long time. This country once produced Reinhold Niebuhrs and Martin Luther Kings, Edward R. Murrows and Jane Addams. Why we don't anymore is too long and too depressing, but we don't. Jimmy Carter asked us to be serious about our future, and we chose a fairy tale that we've been paying for ever since, our attention fixed on the silly and the unserious while reality corrodes our time, resources, and ability to respond to the needs and problems we must face to leave to our children as good as we got.

So. This blog will be, at least in part, an effort to refocus, to get serious. That doesn't mean that it will be scary about it. We're good people, like to laugh, think and talk, do things we may share even though you might prefer we keep to ourselves. But you'll see a little more attention here to the folks who are documenting the reality we need to deal with in their books and music, plays and music, than you do on most other blogs. The bad nonsense the media and the politicians have buried us in is slowly being countered by the realistic artists and blogs, and we want to be a part of it, offering good nonsense, good sense in disguise, in response. We hope you enjoy what you find here, but most of all, we hope you think about it and try out the people and materials that we point you to. The effort must be made and reinforced. To do otherwise? Why, that ain't even good nonsense.