{"id":2454,"date":"2002-05-07T14:12:14","date_gmt":"2002-05-07T14:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.armedliberal.com\/?p=4"},"modified":"2002-05-07T14:12:14","modified_gmt":"2002-05-07T14:12:14","slug":"who-the-are-you-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=2454","title":{"rendered":"WHO THE %%^&!! ARE YOU, ANYWAY?"},"content":{"rendered":"

OK, I give up.
\nI\u0092ve been a media consumer all my life, and now have the opportunity to add something to what I call the \u0093mediaverse\u0094 that we are all living within. So here it goes:
\nWHO THE %%^&!! ARE YOU, ANYWAY? <\/b>
\nJust a guy. I live in Southern California, although I\u0092ve lived on the East Coast and in Europe. Middle-aged, straight, mostly white. Divorced dad with a crop of awesome sons. I can be emailed at eablair@excite.com<\/a>, although I\u0092m not the Eric Blair who is trolling the blogoverse so thoroughly.
\nI\u0092m choosing not to identify myself \u0096 right now \u0096 for a variety of reasons. I\u0092ll start by standing on the time-honored tradition of anonymous pamphleteering, which I believe blogging fits neatly into. My significant other has a fairly political job (although she doesn\u0092t believe so). And finally, I\u0092m trying to disassociate the value of what is set out here from any judgment you might make about me.
\nWHY \u0093ARMED LIBERAL\u0094 <\/b>
\nBecause that\u0092s what I am. I\u0092m a Liberal \u0096 one who believes in the potential value of government action. And I\u0092m armed \u0096 I own guns, and believe that the American political landscape is profoundly different because of the kinds of individual rights (I\u0092ve never bought the collectivist 2nd amendment arguments) represented by gun ownership.
\nThat tension \u0096 between a belief that government can, through its authority and power, move societies in good directions, and the need for strong individual rights \u0096 defines my politics pretty well, actually. And by extension, I believe it defines American politics in the 20th and 21st century awfully damn well.
\nWHAT\u0092S THE \u0093MEDIAVERSE\u0094, ANYWAY? <\/b>
\nThink about it. In the course of your daily life, how much of what you know and believe you know comes from your direct experience or the direct experience of anyone you know?
\nWe\u0092re blessed to live in a \u0093global village\u0094 (thanks, Marshall). But the price we pay is that increasingly, our experiences are mediated \u0096 they are not experiences we directly sense or participate in, or even that we know people who sense or participate in. Instead, we have created professional classes who sense, review, and act on our behalf. We watch the results on paper or on computer, television, or movie screens. And we try and build out internal lives around what we are shown and told.
\nThere are good things that come from this, without question. But there are problems as well. We\u0092ll talk about this later on.
\nSO HOW\u0092S THIS GOING TO WORK, ANYWAY? <\/b>
\nI tend to do things vertically \u0096 I buy all the recordings of musicians I like, read all the books by authors, etc. I also have not much time in my life, so here\u0092s what I\u0092m planning.
\nI\u0092ll spend 30 minutes a day, and try and do two things: respond to the meme of the moment, and also try and extend a few arguments in some depth over several posts.
\nLet\u0092s see how it goes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OK, I give up. I\u0092ve been a media consumer all my life, and now have the opportunity to add something to what I call the \u0093mediaverse\u0094 that we are all living within. So here it goes: WHO THE %%^&!! ARE YOU, ANYWAY? Just a guy. I live in Southern California, although I\u0092ve lived on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}