12 days. Wow. If I am trying to kill this blog, then it looks like I am succedding.

To be fair, I have had a rather full plate this last week-and-a-half:

• I finished my discrete math exam, and I think I did pretty well. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high though, mainly because I am one of those that has never been able to go home after a test and look up answers to the questions that were on it. When I'm done, I'm done. Nothing to be done about it anyway, right?
• Secondly, I have been adding a room to our house. Well, sort of. I intend to post some pictures of it here soon.
• And thirdly, I managed to finish a sizeable, two-part work project I had pending before Christmas. Yippee...

And the little blog-related energy I have had extra, I have been using in comment boxes all over the Net. As an example, I was reading a looong and depressing comment-thread about the chimperor sporting an iPod in his recent Time profile, and just had to respond. Not only did I want the people in the comment-thread, who were writing that muck, to hear me. More to the point, I think I am finally on a way out of this depressing rut I have been stuck in since America voted this clown into office last November. So I wrote this:

I started to read this apparently endless thread and, almost as a reflex, stopped again as soon as I saw what was really festering in it.

But then I realized that by averting my eyes from this pestulance, I am condoning it. So I made myself read the whole thing.

This is that time of year when I normally am able to get a little mid-winter break, and enjoy the festival of lights that this nation excels at producing in late December. Some religions have a name for it, others do not. But this has still been that time of year when people smile a little more genuinely to each other, and actually look other people in the eye. We are reminded that we co-exist in this country, this world, and therefore have a need to respect each other. There is no place else to go to. And it simply does not bring you anything but misery, if you spend your relatively short time on this Earth, fretting about the fact that we are not all of the same opinion.

So you can now see how reading this drivel made me sad. Truly sad. I feel like I am witnessing the beginning of the breakdown of this society. The disrespective, hate-filled, spiteful projectiles that almost all of you hurl at each other are so pointless, so far removed from any sense of intelligent discussion, that it borders on depressive. And it dampens ones hopes for the future of this country. You can see that it does not matter who would have won this presidential election, the situation would be the same: Two ever-growing factions of people that have less and less understanding of, and respect for, the human beings that belong to the "other" faction. This leaves the rest of America either disgusted with both of these hateful sects, or disinterested in the apparently failed political system, as a whole. Why do you think that fewer and fewer of our children are participating in the democratic process, even taking into the account the spike in turn-out for this last presidential election? "It's the hate, stupid", to paraphrase a common quote. You can not tell me, earnestly, that this is still a meaningful debate. It has long since lost any relevance. Or meaning. It is nothing but a pityful shouting contest, designed to denigrade, embarrass, and belittle other people, and their beliefs.

I am not going to fall into the trap of telling you to stop, to "see the light", or whatever one should be urging you to do. Because I do not belief you would listen. Nor am I going to let myself be pushed to a cynical disposition by this, declaring myself better than you, and passing judgement on you as being some sort of bad people.

But I refuse to read this vile and just turn quietly to another page. This needed to be said. At least I needed to.

I felt better as soon as I had written it. It did not matter that I could not publish it, due to an apparent 100 post maximum per news item.

I just genuinely feel a little better.

Which is good.