“Interesting That You’re Not Writing About It…” UPDATED

:::Scroll midway to update:::

I got an email from a fellow a few days ago, urging me to read Bill Whittle’s latest entry into his collection of remarkable essays, over here.

As it happened, I was actually printing out the two-parter, entitled “You are not alone,” as I’d opened the email, and I wrote back to the reader telling him, essentially, “thanks, I’ve got it.”

Today the reader wrote back saying, “Interesting that you’re not writing about it.”

That’s when I noticed that the header on the email said, “Conservative Anger.”

Oh. I guess I’m supposed to write about Conservative Anger, or something. Shrug.

As I noted yesterday, I’m in the middle of doing the reading-for-pay thing which must be done to pay the bills…so I haven’t been spending a whole lot of time contemplating Conservative Anger…but I’ll show you what I wrote to this reader off the top of my head about both Whittle’s essay and Conservative Anger, with a few lines edited or expanded:

I love Bill’s work, – he is a tremendous writer and thinker – but his latest didn’t hang in my memory and urge me to respond. The game-theory, tit-for-tat stuff was very interesting, but nothing I would write about because it’s too smart for me. The “Remnant” writing was less interesting, possibly because I’ve been aware of the Remnant for an exceedingly long time, and I’m also aware that you do not bring the remnant together and organize it in anticipation of something – then it ceases to be The Remnant and simply becomes a movement.

The Remnant is much deeper than any movement, and it will surface on its own – full of surprising and surprised people – in due time, when it must, and that may be soon, but neither you nor I know the day or hour. The thing about remnants is that they identify themselves after a carpet has been laid or a robe has been cut, not before.

Remnants do not stop a construct from happening…they survive it.

“Conservative anger” doesn’t particularly interest me, any more than “liberal anger” interests me. Anger is an emotion and when parties are running on emotion, they’re useless. We’ve watched the liberals run on emotion for 6 years and seen how nuts it has made them…if the right wants to now run on emotion, well…it won’t serve them any better.

Organized anger on either side leaves the masses ripe for manipulation. Matters are much too serious – throughout the world and in our country – to allow emotionalism to seize and carry the day. I think Abraham Lincoln said something like that, back in the day:

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” Lincoln’s Second Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862.

“We must disenthrall ourselves…” That means moving beyond all the sputtering rage, to clear thinking and problem-solving rendered with respectful tongues and open minds.

::::UPDATE::::Interestingly, something like that is happening in the comments section here.

My blog is my little world of freedom in which I indulge my own leanings. On my blog I blog about the things that interest me at the particular moment that I am sitting down and writing – whatever grabs my passion, so to speak – and when I write, I hope it is interesting to others as well, but I am writing for myself. I never allow others to dictate to me what I will write, or when. When people ask me why I’m not writing about this scandal or that headline-grabbing bit, or the latest missing blonde girl getting saturation coverage on FOX, the answer is always the same – I write what interests me.

Curiously, although I have plenty of thoughts in my head about the unhealthy Yankees and the dreaded Red Sox, I have not written about Baseball, this year, either. It’s simply that my time is at a premium right now, and what little breath I get to catch at my “anchoress window” needs to be one that can keep me centered, sane and focused in a world increasingly off-balance, quite mad and layered in illusion. Sometimes that means paying no attention at all to the huffing and puffing of every passerby as they get completely stuck in the world and its winds (forgetting that sometimes therein reside angels), looking around and – before getting back to work – spending a little time with the breviary. Which is exactly what I’ve been doing.

In the huge reading pile I am currently attacking none of the pieces are touching on immigration or “conservative anger.” I am myself trying – between chapters – to collect my thoughts on Bush, immigration, etc…but whether I post on it or not completely depends on how I feel when I sit down to write – if my head is full of a psalm, I’ll end up writing about that, instead.

So if anyone hopes to induce me or tease me into writing something he wants on his schedule, well – good luck. My editors can’t do it, either! :-)