Core Concepts #1 – Addressing Privilege

I’m going to start this blog off with a series of posts on certain core concepts in progressive politics. Some of these are going to be tough to write, some are going to be tough to read, and some might end up being controversial. Stick with it, though.

I want to start these posts with a caveat — I’m not an expert. I’m not a professional politician or philosopher or anti-oppression trainer or anything like that. What I am is a large white cis-gendered LGBTQ man who’s spent more than twenty years as an activist trying to negotiate very diverse spaces and relationships in a respectful manner.. and let me be clear: I have not always done so successfully, but I’ve been fortunate enough to be surrounded by people who have recognized that I’m making the effort and made allowances for my shortcomings… while simultaneously refusing to let me get away with them.

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Starting Out Not-So-Fresh

So… May 31st, 2019.

I’ve decided to start this new blog. I’ve written a number of blogs before, most notably a reasonably successful blog focused on the Society for Creative Anachronism, but that’s the very definition of a niche market… and since I’m not playing in the SCA anymore, that blog’s pretty much gone defunct. I want to do a lot more writing on political and social topics outside of the historical reenactment community, so a new blog makes sense.

Yeah, I know: The last thing the world needs is another white guy bitching about politics. But let’s face it: I’d be doing on Facebook anyway, so I might as well be a little more organized about it and blogging’s what I know.

This first post’s going to be pretty dull. I’m still configuring the blog, of course, so this post is largely filler just to get in there. The other thing I’m trying to do – after the success of my last blog – is to monetize my writing. That means owning my own domain rather than publishing on a .wordpress.com address like my last couple of efforts, and it means sorting out how to get ads plugged in, etc. That is proving to be a lot more frustrating than I’d hoped; I’m no slouch at the computer stuff but getting registered and set up, et cetera, has proven to be somewhat more opaque than you’d think. I’ll get it sorted out eventually, but in the short term I’m about ready to beat my head against the keyboard.

I know people are going to be annoyed by the presence of ads on this blog, but look: I’ve always been a writer; now it’s time to try and make some money off of my skills. I tried the journalism thing when I was younger – to the point of getting a college diploma in journalism – and I have to be honest, it’s a wretched way to make a living. As the great Hunter S. Thompson once wrote “I’ve always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it’s a bit like fucking, which is only fun for amateurs. Old whores don’t do much giggling.” I hated being a reporter, especially a small-town reporter because there was no creative aspect to it at all… and covering municipal politics is no fun. In fact, my personal vision of Hell is being stuck in an eternal municipal council meeting knowing that I’m going to have to produce five column inches of copy as soon as the questions from the public are answered.

I enjoy writing. It helps me get my thoughts straightened out. I’ve always been a writer and I’m always going to be one. On my last blog I was doing the work – and writing can be very hard emotional work — and getting tens of thousands of hits at my old blog… but not seeing a cent of revenue. Death threats and harassment, yes, (some reenactors take their hobby way too seriously) and a certain amount of notoriety within the reenactment community, but I’d like to have something a little more concrete in the way of reward. So… monetization.

The other goal I’m setting myself for this blog is to get into a regular schedule of writing and publishing. On the old blog, every few months it seems like I’d start a post with “I know it’s been a while” and then write thousands of words on whatever tickled my fancy. I’m going to try and stick with publishing a few hundred words three times a week rather than ten or twenty thousand every couple of months. One of the very few advantages of living in the Trump era is that there’s never any shortage of something that will get me worked up enough to put forward my opinion.

Also, just a quick note of the name of the new blog: The Hungover Pundit. I am absolutely writing this hungover. I got caught up in a Philosophy Tube marathon last night and had one too many Old Fashioneds. I’ve been wrestling with HTML codes and plugin software while drinking coffee and hoping the ibuprofen will kick in sometime soon; this is pretty much my default state in the year 2019.