End of an Era
The times, they are a-changin'. I started FWG in late 2002 to provide myself a written outlet for my 9/11-inspired political awakening. Instantly it was a lot of fun. My thinking brought me to some scary and stimulating realizations about the inextricability of utopian thinking and anti-Semitism, and how this was shaping left-wing thought, especially since the Second Intifada and 9/11. I began to focus on this topic, but I wrote about a lot of other stuff, some related, some not. I kept blogging with great diligence until late 2005/early 2006. Around this time I was hit with a trifecta of disenchantment with the Iraq War and neoconservatism, the atrocious quality of many of the most popular blogs, and frankly my own lack of political knowledge and experience. I stood down and started reading, doing photography and working on other, personal stuff.
That gave me time to think about how I was presenting my writing online. Some things became clear: I had no recognizable brand, and I was mixing quasi-academic writings on intellectual history and political psychology with more whimsical and colloquial posts on everyday things. The former was self-defeating, and the latter drew two, incompatible audiences which were mostly driven away by the alternating content.
I want to get back into writing now. And I want to address these concerns. Therefore, I'm euthanizing poor Fightin' with Grabes, and raising two blogs in its place. For my writings on intellectual history, Israel and the New-Antisemitism, please check out my new blog The Socialism of Fools, which I lead off with a post about progressive isolationism and Ron Paul. And for more general stuff, check out my new eponymous blog, John-Paul Pagano.
I'm going to leave FWG up for a while, but eventually I will migrate its better posts to these two new blogs and then delete it.-- by John-Paul (5:07 PM) | Link | | |
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