So Long, John

John Emerson, one of the contributors at the always stellar Seeing the Forest, is taking a break from blogging, maybe permanently. (Dave and the rest of the STF crew will still be there.) He’s having a serious case of the fuckits, and I can’t say I blame him:

I really dread the next four years. I expect the worst from Bush -- specifically, war fever plus McCarthyism. There have been a number of positive changes in the Democratic party, but Democrats as a group still don't seem prepared for what's going to happen, and it may be too little, too late.

At the beginning of my blogging career I was happy just to vent, but over the last year or so I've tried to figure out a way to make something of my political writing. That really hasn't happened -- I still seem to be speaking to the same small audience of people who basically already agree with me, without really getting my message out the generic Democrats or the big-time bloggers -- much less the party leadership.

I will always be angry about the crappy 2004 campaign, the overpaid consultants, and the unresponsive and bureaucratic Democratic Party (and Kerry campaign) -- and especially, the New Dems who are only now finally realizing that perhaps their destruction of the left wing of the Democratic party left them vulnerable to attack. Lieberman's hot wet kiss with Bush at the State of the Union speech was just the killing blow.

[…]

The United States has been taken over by a cult -- the hardcore 30% who think that nuclear war is a fun idea, that France is an enemy nation, that the Confederacy was perfectly wonderful, that Armageddon is coming soon and is something to pray for, and that the federal government should be starved to death. They're the bad guys, but the ones who you really have to blame are the ones who don't bother and don't care: the cynics, the apathetic, the non-voters, the game-players, the media careerists, and the self-described "moderates". By the time those guys get the idea, it will probably be too late.

Go read the whole thing. John’s mad at and disappointed in a lot of stuff, all of which any of us can understand. I wish he weren’t leaving, but I can totally relate, I totally commiserate, and I’ll totally miss him.