Welcome to The Last Outpost, my own little corner of the blogosphere devoted to incoherent rants about Canadian and international politics, public policy, strategic studies, and how the world is going to hell in a handbasket generally.
Just as every author of an academic treatise seems to feel compelled to justify why they wrote yet another book on the fascinating subject of the etiology of the jury system in the courts of assize established by Henry II, I feel a few words about why I started this blog are in order.
I’m an avid reader and occasional commenter on other peoples’ blogs, but until now I’ve resisted the idea of starting my own, for several reasons: first, I was reluctant to make the time commitment involved; it’s so much easier hanging out on other peoples’ blogs and dropping a comment when the mood strikes me. No pressure. Second, the blogosphere is a pond dominated by a few huge man eating fish and innumerable tiny insignificant minnows, and I’m obviously a minnow. It seems like a lot of work writing stuff no one is going to read (did I mention I’m lazy?) Third, I’ve always kind of suspected that there is a touch of egomania motivating many bloggers –why would anyone care what I think about anything anyway?, and I flatter myself that I’m not an egomaniac.
Having said all that, what finally forced me to reconsider is that Billmon abruptly threw in the towel at The Whiskey Bar on December 28. Some of you have no idea who Billmon is, which is a tragedy, kind of like spending two years living in a apartment in the same building as Ernest Hemingway on rue Cardinal Lemoine in Paris and not realizing it until after he’s moved out. Suffice it to say that IMO Billmon was hands down the best blogger on the Internet, and that’s saying something (those of you who are really interested can read his entry in Wikipedia and, although he pulled the plug on his website (www.billmon.org), the posts, except for the last six months, are archived here. They will reward close reading with a wealth of insight into geopolitics and economics).
The day after Billmon called it quits Swopa over at progressive power blog Firedog Lake made the following comment:
Some people, though, might think it's unfair of Billmon to leave — that as (by acclamation) the most purely talented writer on any blog, we need his gifts more now than ever as we battle to end the war in Iraq and retake the White House in 2008. Although Billmon might consider this comparison to be sacrilegious, I'm reminded of a perhaps-apocryphal story (I can't find any reference to it via Google) I read once about John Lennon. During Lennon's five-year retirement from music in the late 1970s, a top rock critic wrote a melodramatic plea for him to return, claiming that only the brilliant John Lennon could make sense of the times and show his fans the way forward.
Lennon supposedly passed on a riposte via a mutual acquaintance: "Tell him I did my part. It's his turn now." If Billmon has indeed shuttered the Whiskey Bar for good, that's the lesson for us — it's our turn now.
It is in the spirit of continuing the very high quality of analysis that Billmon routinely provided, and the contribution it made to public discourse, that I decided to start The Last Outpost. Of course no one blog, and certainly not this one, can hope to fill the void left by Billmon’s retirement from blogging. However, as someone who shares many of his intellectual interests and concerns I decided that it's time to stop making excuses and accept responsibility for doing my small part to fill that void. When the age of heroes has past nothing remains for us mortals but to set before us their example and aspire to do it justice, even knowing that we can never hope to attain the same lofty peaks!
So once again, welcome.
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