That and a dollar will get me on a bus. It would have done the same ten years ago.
In the years between 2006 and 2009, the liberal "netroots" had reached its peak, and there was no stronger a state to find it than in Michigan. While every state had its own network of bloggers, in the netroots community, Michigan was known as "the Juggernaut". At our peak we had over 80 blogs discussing politics in our state. We were the largest collection of bloggers in the country, and we were damn proud of it.
I had my own blogger handle that was picked out for me when I was young.
In the 90s, back in the days of usenet groups and dial-up modems, I was given my name when I was 15 years old.
I got it because I had just started doing karate in those days, and every time I advanced to the next belt, I wrote about it on those usenet groups to my online friends to boast of my accomplishments. Those friends named me:
The Young Grasshopper
Like any 90s kid that does martial arts, I was a fan of the show Kung Fu, and loved it. I owned that name. I made email addresses out of it. It was my name on every internet related thing I had to sign up for (back in the days before you could simply sign into something by giving your Facebook profile).
So when I started political blogging in the mid-aughts, that was my name. DJ The Young Grasshopper, usually as the acronym that had all the first letters in that name. I blogged because during the beginning of those times, I was in Iraq, and netroots activism was all I was able to do to do my part to fight against the Bush Jr. administration. In 2004 I was mad that the war in Iraq (before I deployed) had already gone to shit, and wanted to do my part to get the war to end. By the time I deployed, I was writing.
I became one of the top bloggers in Michigan for that very reason. Blogging when you're serving in Iraq (and even after I came home) gives you a ton of street cred, and also makes you a powerful weapon against chickenhawk assholes that would dare call anyone against the war traitors. I would remind any trolls that we came across that I did my time in the sandbox, so where the fuck where they? I didn't serve with them. They were at home preaching about the need for this needless war, while I was over there, wondering if I would see tomorrow.
The years passed, and I made a name for myself in the Michigan juggernaut by having both an extremely sharp wit and equal parts cynicism and self-righteousness that made my posts as entertaining as they were biting. I would attack both Republicans and Democrats alike (but mostly Republicans) when they were involved in any kind of state or national fuckery.
While my name carried zero recognition in 99.9% of the state, politicians in Lansing knew me quite well, and many were scared of me. I was told by another liberal blogger that the state GOP had files on all of us. We were scary enough to them that they did opposition research on us. I gave zero fucks on that, because they had nothing on me. What are they going to say, that I'm an angry Iraq war veteran? Shit, at that time in the war, if you were going to go after an angry veteran that had become disillusioned by the war, you'd have to take a number. Three quarters of us were against the war at the time.
But, things changed.
Because of a situation that I can't discuss much about because it ended in a lawsuit settlement (I can tell you that I ended up being on the better end of it), I stopped blogging. I really can't discuss that lawsuit, but what I can tell you is that the actions that happened before that lawsuit scared the hell out of me. I feared for my life for a very long time because of actions taken by a certain person.
Back then, before the neo-nazis and the mens right activists fucked it all up, even trolls had rules. You kept the shit online and impersonal. That person broke them. That's all I'll say on that.
By the time the dust settled on that situation, blogging had become archaic. I was fine with that, because I was too scared to do any political blogging again. It was easier just to post news stories on Facebook.
After I had kids, I had very little desire for any type of political activism, even the type that you do online. Hell, it's one of the bigger reasons why I wish that Clinton had won the election.
I still debate politics online under names that aren't remotely related to my blogger archetype. After the election, I told right-wingers that they didn't realize what they had done. We old(ish) activists were tired. I was hoping that Clinton would win for many reasons, but a big one was that I was just too damn tired to be an activist anymore. Yeah great, Clinton wins. She already knew that she wasn't going to get any cooperation from the GOP in Congress, so she'd carve her own path. Great, it means that I don't have to get in the dirt anymore. I can just do my day job, raise my kids, continue to kick ass at the gym, and be done with the whole damn thing. Her victory would have been the best thing to happen to the right, because we on the left were just too goddamn tired of fighting, and her victory would be enough to take a long rest while the right would continue to do battle.
But here we are.
Yep, here we fucking are.
The right didn't realize that Trump's win would do more than energize us. It made us lose our fucking minds! I'm now hearing conversations from the left about arming ourselves and getting concealed weapon permits (I already have guns and permits, but thanks for joining me guys). That's a sharp turn from just a few months ago. We didn't just get motivated, we got fucking militant. We saw a guy become president by not just losing the majority of the voters, but one that was actively helped by white supremacist groups. One that was helped by Russian interference into our democratic process. A man that has no goddamn business having access to the nuclear codes.
The left isn't tired anymore, and we're a fuck-ton more motivated than we were in 2005. We're ready to do one thing, and one thing only. Destroying Nazis.
We want our scalps.
Before this election, I would listen to "Fight to Live" by The Bouncing Souls, and scream about how, "the fight to live is the only fight, I got left in me". After the election, I got a lot more fight left in me. Enough to last four years.
I never intended to start writing about politics on here, and did my best to avoid doing so, but I can no longer pretend that politics isn't a big part of my life and interconnected to my health and well being. Politics is a major part of what happens in all our lives, whether we want it to or not. I can no longer talk about fitness, health, and mental illness and leave discussions of the fate of the Affordable Care Act out of it. I can't blog about my mental illness without discussing the fear of our country being ran by an insecure, narcissistic idiot that is both Russia's puppet and has the ability to get us all blown to hell in a nuclear holocaust at worst and will lead us into another recession where I'm scared about money problems at best. I can't blog about raising two wonderful girls to be strong, independent, and healthy without talking about feminism. I also can't refuse to talk about racism, implicit bias, and prejudice and call myself a decent person.
Hell, at this point, net neutrality is being threatened, and I may not be able to blog at all without that!
I can't separate the political and the apolitical on here anymore. They're both connected, and I'm done with pretending that they aren't.
The Grasshopper is back from retirement. I'm too old to be The Young Grasshopper anymore. Just call me The Grasshopper, or Grasshopper for short.
And should any trolls try to come after me, keep in mind what happened to the last guy. The local trolls can tell you all about him, and it's why they fear my name. I could always use another settlement check.
Just sayin'
I'm also armed, carrying, and I train while you sleep.
As old as you are, I am older and more tired!
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