Introducing MC-B

April 19, 2007, 3:46 pm; posted by
Filed under Articles, MC-B  | 3 Comments

Hello, everyone. I don’t have the benefit of knowing all of the Bweinh.com contributors in the real world, and I also have yet to meet many of our readers. For these reasons, I’ve decided my first contribution will be something of an intellectual history and biography, and I’ll save the angry rants for next time.

Before we set out, though, I would like to point out that there is at least an 83.7% chance that this history will contain only one use of the phrase “raisin poop,” and that’s already happened. Apologies all around, and now we may begin.

I’m fairly sure that among the first political books I read was Al Franken’s Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot, updated with new material for the era. Politics was so simple to understand as a youth; rich fat men took everything that the poor, Dickensian, coal-smudged lower class had to buy yachts, and every trace of political hatred was concealed beneath a thin, crunchy coating of humorous insults and semi-witty barbs. This conceptualization of politics was further ingrained in me through my household, but lest I write something disrespectful of my parents, I’ll end this line of thought now. Suffice to say that I once got into an argument with my mother about whether the 1970s-80s backlash against progressivism was the fault of hippies, and she responded by asking me if the Holocaust was the fault of the Jews. Godwin’s Law in action, though not online.

Still, I grew up a young progressive, bravely fighting the conservative machine that dominated upstate New York. I remember Mr. Haley (my semi-legendary high school history teacher) placing a non-monetary bet with a rookie teacher that the next student who approached them would identify him/herself as a Republican. I was the next person to the front of the room, so Mr. Haley lost the bet and I won a hearty “Welcome to the good side.”

But then I got to college.

My chosen freshman seminar was “Peace, Power and Sustainability.” From the title, I expected at least some of the course to be about peace or power, which reveals something about my naiveté regarding the priorities of private liberal arts institutions. The course consisted primarily of synthesizing peace studies with environmental concerns. On the plus side, I met some very interesting people, but my eyes got a lot of exercise that semester from extensive rolling, as I realized that many who leaned the same way as I did politically were also the most overbearing and annoying people I’d ever met. Around the same time, I started taking economics courses, and found out the rich were rich because they were good at what they did. Since then I’ve argued with many anti-globalizationists who still want to keep their iPods.

So now you know why I haven’t committed myself toward one party or the other — I can’t accept enough of what either tells me. Also, my faith probably has a great deal to do with my political beliefs and I suspect that, in this respect, I will be in good company on Bweinh!

Hopefully future articles will be easier to understand because of this exercise, and also a bit less dull. If not, give me a mulligan and we’ll start over fresh next time.


Comments

3 Comments to “Introducing MC-B”

  1. Mike J on April 22nd, 2007 2:32 pm

    I’m gonna like this guy…

  2. Rose on April 23rd, 2007 10:41 am

    Me too…

  3. MC-B on April 23rd, 2007 9:36 pm

    Don’t be too quick to judge… I can be pretty irksome.

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