If you're wondering, I'm still pondering. The question, prefaced by the premise: What I've been doing here for 20 years (25 total online) has rather conspicuously failed to even mildly dent the steel-tempered, vulcanized skulls now dwelling as an electoral majority in republican darkness — thus, what next?
My voice, of course, has been but a barely detectable peep among the throngs of the reasonably sane and published. I have never believed my words alone would be of any influential heft; I suppose a sizable ego is inherent in political writing, or perhaps any public writing, but mine is nowhere close to being that immense or arrogant.
What I've written has only added, and in the most minor of ways, to the reams of protest, indignation and, above all, exhortations to change our national course — or wither and perish. Yet all such motivations behind all the writings of every rational political observer over the past four years yielded, on Tuesday night, the objective's precise opposite.
Clearly — or so it seems to me — we have been doing something wrong, something terribly wrong. Hence the question: What next? I can't answer for others. For myself, all I can answer is that I'm sincerely thinking it out, seeking some sort of new direction.
For that matter, I should not have written just now that we have fouled our appointed mission. Again, I can, or rather should, speak only for myself. I have greatly admired the magnificent writings of so many voices over the last several years — to speak of their failure would be a cheap conflation with mine. So strike that. (This might be the world's first retraction in the original piece.)
I wish to add this much for now. I have made many new friends online — readers who have become my closest friends, and yet I've met not one face to face. You know who you are. I'd like to name names but I won't, both for fear of omissions and lack of permisssions. I must add as well that I've heard from many of you — and each sounding has been one of encouragement, stiff upper lip and all that.
One dear friend, a man of inexpressible honor who lives high in the Rocky Mountains (Attn: Trumpers: No he is not under Latino-gang-violence siege), wrote a one-word email to me post-election: "Courage." Numerically I replied in kind, and too flippantly: "Passport." Sorry, my good friend; flippancy is just one of my many personality flaws.
Only minutes ago another friend, a Londonite writer of prodigious distinction, emailed: "Don't throw in the towel, Phil, your sane voice is more important than ever." He cannot know the depth of my appreciation for that; the problem being, I cannot know the truth of it.
One name I shall name but only because I've done so before on this site. One Norm Sibum, he of exquisite poetic mind and the Canadian prose guy behind Ephemeris, his website section that anyone with a taste for the literary and commentary on it should read regularly.
These Canadians, they stick together I guess. Because Sibum I heard from a mutual Canadian friend, a lady of strong will and mind about whom you'll read more, right here, sometime down the road. Her email was a twofer; first relating the news she had received from Norm: that I shouldn't hang up my shootin' irons.
Then her opinion, in which you'll recognize my above reference to strong mindedness. "It's your call, but for all your impetuousness, your love of country is unquestionable. Not like you to jump ship.... Give yourself time to scope out the territory, to reconnoiter as it were" — but for Pete's sake, make haste slowly, her concluding words.
My final note on good friends — the countless readers who've been kind enough over the years to write some thanks for my efforts here and encourage my lasting power.
About that, I'll say this. I've neither forsaken nor lost any of it. My Canadian lady friend was spot on in notating my "impetuousness," yet another personality flaw that was banging on all cylinders yesterday when I posted this. A trifle over the top, perhaps, but only in some of its aspects.
When I wrote I'm done with it — the whole [expletive deleted] mess we've made of this country — I confess those words were teetering on the edge of my being done with commentary on it, too. Either teetering or plunging, not quite sure. But slowly with haste my blood pressure is lowering, my temper tempering, and my mind rethinking.
Where it will land I'm not yet sure. I am sure of one thing, however. I'm not quitting this site. Just allow me some time to think things through a bit further. When a spark ignites my synapses and that particular thinking is done, the direction I'll head on this site may be all wrong once again, but silence won't be a part of my error.