Last week, I read an article by Charles Krauthammer called The Fierce Urgency of Pork. It wasn't a life-changing moment for me. It was, however, a blog-changing moment. Mourning the Death of American Politics is dead. Long live Fierce Urgency. It's broadening. It allows me to blog on a wider variety of topics which should be refreshing. I will still do plenty of posts on politics as I still need to yell my simple message into an unheeding wind...Why are you beating that horse? It's dead! Dead!! DEAD!!! Dismount, you moron.
What really has set me on a new path is not what Krauthammer's article itself. It was not its criticism of the stimulus package. It was not even the stimulus package itself, although that's one impressively gigantic piece of legislation. The article was merely the final straw on the proverbial camel's back.
We live in an age of hyperbole. Nobody seems to listen, or talk for that matter, unless it is expressed in hyperbolic language. If you decided to listen intelligently to what was slung back and forth in the last election cycle, you would realize that most of what was said about the opposition just plain wasn't true. This hyperbole is driven by a fierce urgency among people. It's not the same fierce urgency. Each person has their own fierce urgencies. Some have a fierce urgency to make people believe that Barack Obama is a terrorist. He isn't but that doesn't change the fierce urgency to scream it. Others have a fierce urgency to make people believe that the members of the opposition party are the minions of Satan. They aren't, but it doesn't change the fierce urgency. Just this week, the democrats had a fierce urgency to pass the stimulus package. The republicans had a fierce urgency to vote against it. It was all fierce urgency.
I could fight against this era of fierce urgency. It would be a waste of time. We are creatures of fierce urgency whether we like to admit it or not. We've just gotten really bad at suppressing it in public. The stimulus plan is the latest example. It takes a lot of fierce urgency (and a whole bunch of politicians in the same room) to finish a bill on Thursday and pass it the next day. Fierce urgency rules the day.
I am a creature of fierce urgency just like everyone else. I was a child in the age of the two inch thick catalogs that regularly came to your house. Once I discovered that a portion of the catalog had toys in it, I developed a continuous string of fierce urgencies. But at some point it is time for a man to put away childish things. Then it's time to discover girls. That raises fierce urgency to a whole new level. As time progressed, some fierce urgencies remained, some dissipated to be replaced by other fierce urgencies. In this age of fierce urgency, I intend to embrace the age of fierce urgency with both arms. To be honest, I am looking forward to the new direction this blog will take.
Looking forward to serving you in a new and interesting way,
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