Soon...A Hopeful Beginning and the End of An Anti-W Blogging Era

As the inauguration of the man of change looms, an era of blogging ends: the anti-W blogosphere will collapse.

Blogs started in opposition to W and his clearly failed policies will no longer have their raison d'être; those that hang around will have to make do with the entropic aftermath. Perhaps they will find new fodder for their daily posts in supporting President Obama as he grapples with cleaning up the Bush/NeoCon mess.

As W--all hat and no cattle--rides his one-trick pony into the proverbial sunset bloggers will turn from its fading light. They'll tie one on that good night and hope that the Obama sunrise will obliterate the hangover and be everything we hope it to be.

Most likely, it won't.

I think Obama's a good man. A smart man and the best possible choice for President. He has an able, sharp, experienced Vice President and a talented Cabinet. However, he's one good, smart man saddled with the problems and workload of at least ten good, smart men. He'll need the country's support.

He won't get it from the hardcore Rightwing. Of course, fringe racists will also cheer his failure. One place you will see the resilience of the Radical Right will be in the blogsphere. Count on numerous anti-Obama sites, replete with lies, half-truths, straw-man arguments and fallacies to populate exponentially like cancer cells in the body politic.

Obama, however, is good at fighting back. He fights logically, strategically and effectively. He'll still need his amen corner in the blogosphere, but that core group will be smaller than the legion of anti-W bloggers who banded together these past eight years.

SoonerThought was one of those Anti-W sites. In the midst of Bush's criminal power grab, I felt the need to make my opposition known. Therefore, SoonerThought started as a WordPress site in 2005. It garnered more than 200,000 hits before I downgraded it to this inexpensive, lower-profile blogger site a year and a half ago. The site featured original commentary and meta news, provoking some debate and even garnering national attention--most recently when the selection of Sarah Palin put our link on the front page of the Alaska Daily News.

The site's companion podcast posted more than 60 popular episodes featuring opinions, news and interviews with politicians, comedians, musicians and best-selling authors like William Blum and Greg Palast.

I'm proud of SoonerThought, proud of my words and proud that in some very small way it contributed to political change. However, as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end--especially when a sea change of political thought sweeps the nation.

Your humble editor will still make his opinions known, still be an activist, still write checks to good candidates and still comment in the blogosphere. But SoonerThought has come to its natural end. Similar to my sentiments when I left the political stage in Oklahoma as a candidate, I say four years is plenty. I have other things to say, other stories to tell.

President Obama will have my unequivocal support--it will just manifest itself in other ways, in other places. I hope you will support him, too. Our country needs every good man and woman to come to its aid--whether in the blogosphere, the voting booth, or the halls of power.

It's my hope that the blogosphere can become more civil, and that civility will seep back into our politics. It starts with you--those who write the blogs, read them and comment on them. Yes, I have been guilty of provocative, pugilistic and even nasty commentary. When political arguments ignite, when you see your country crashing and burning, you obviously get passionate. If I was uncivil at times, I apologize for my tone, though not my beliefs. I now make it my practice to be civil and constructive in my comments on other blogs, and hope you will, too.

As for SoonerThought, January 20 puts an end to our mission. Though the nation's work is far from done, this site's work is.

God bless America and our planet. Thanks for reading and listening.