But I quit smoking about 200 times before I succeeded so I'm not one to let past failures to quit stop me from trying again.
So why quit? Well, I have a day job -- minimum 5 days a week, minimum 8 hours a day. And unlike the people I chat with on Twitter, my day job is not to get paid to talk about politics. My employer definitely would not endorse any of my views and now would be a good time to state that my views are my views alone and do not represent the views of my employer.
When I started blogging, I was childless and had only myself to support. Today, I'm married and have a family to support, including a 5 month old daughter. My family should and usually does mean a lot more to me than my attachment to politics. On Sunday, the priest at the local cathedral gave a good homily on attachment to worldly things. He was speaking largely of material wealth, but the point is still valid for my obsession with all things political. I really appreciated the priest's cute little joke about the Buddhist vacuum cleaner... you know, since Buddhists detest attachment so much their vacuum cleaners don't come with any attachments.
My daughter means more to me than any "attachment" in this world every could. She doesn't know the first thing about Twitter or blogging. She even smiled at me when I returned to the dugout after another lousy softball at bat. Her only worldly attachment right now is well, her parents. Today, it almost feels like my baby girl has more to teach me about not being attached to worldly things than I have to teach her about the world.
The legal disclaimer for this blog contains a quote from one of my favorite movies, A Time To Kill.
"You see, in all this legal maneuvering something has gotten lost, and that something is the truth."The truth is, my heart isn't into politics anymore. But now that I have a daughter, I'm far more motivated by something else from the movie A Time To Kill. The reason that movie was so powerful is that Grisham captured perfectly in Carl Lee Hailey a father's role as protector of his family -- especially his daughter(s). I also love the movie Gran Torino for similar reasons -- though Clint Eastwood ends up protecting the family next door because they show more loyalty and love to him than his actual children do. But it's a universal yearning all fathers of all races, creeds and nationalities have -- to protect their families.
"Now, it is incumbent upon us lawyers not to just talk about the truth, but to actually seek it, to find it, to live it."
Grisham's genius was to portray a black man in the South in the role of protector, protecting his family against the white thugs that raped his daughter and then trying in vain to protect them from a trial by a mostly white jury. Gran Torino turned the protector's role on its head and instead of making the protector an empathetic character like Carl Lee Hailey chose a not so empathetic bitter old white blue collar man known for making crude, distasteful and some would surely say racist remarks. Gran Torino took a much different and much more difficult and unexpected road to arrive at the same place -- the father who would do whatever was necessary to defend his family (or adopted family) including sacrificing his own life if necessary.
And that's the road I'm on and I frankly don't see my personal Tweets or blog posts about politics adding any value to my family today. I hope I'm never faced with the ugly violent threats to my family that the main characters in Gran Torino or A Time To Kill were forced to defend their families from, but I hope I won't hesitate to do what is necessary and right in order to protect them.
With that, I leave you with this powerful closing argument:
