In 2007, when my adventures in blogging began, I had written much but shared little of it with the public. I'd never had many opportunities. I had hardly published any place other than local newsletters and opinion pieces for my left-wing mentors in Buffalo. Some of my earlier articles had gotten picked up by CounterPunch and even Daily Kos.
Those years seem an eternity ago. In retrospect I must admit that the 2000s were a calmer era of my life, though I have always had a tendency to get myself into arguments I probably could have avoided. If it felt calm, it was because I was blissfully unaware of my own depravity. I lived untroubled by knowledge of how far I'd fallen from Christ.
Back then people who read my polemical pieces against George W. Bush's policies, and especially my antiwar screeds, understandably took me for a leftist. If they got to know me and figured out my complex and often contradictory politics, they usually couldn't handle it. Most people I knew then hailed from the left but didn't think they had any political camp at all. They thought their place on the political spectrum was the only plausible position to hold.
