I’m discontinuing my political blog, dead raccoon in the road. Thanks to everyone who kept up with it and everyone who linked.
Time-wise, there’s no reason why I couldn’t keep it going as an occasional thing, posting whenever the spirit moves me. I imagine it serves a marginally useful social function as a political links blog for a few of my Bloglines-using friends who don’t have the time or patience to keep up with the news otherwise. But it was beginning to feel a bit fraudulent. A blog should be part of a larger conversation, in my view. And I’m afraid I don’t make the effort to keep up with more than four or five political blogs. I can’t, really. I already read 50 blogs, and that – in addition to whatever online news sources I can squeeze in, plus the Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, and a handful of magazines – is the absolute limit, at least if I am going to continue to put the kind of energy into Via Negativa that it deserves.
Plus, while it was fun playing Grand Inquisitor for a couple of months, I was rarely too happy with the results. Toxic sarcasm makes for good punk and heavy metal lyrics, but beyond that, it’s, well, toxic.
A third motivating factor is my interest in taking on other projects, for which I never seem to run out of ideas. Stay tuned.