If you read monoblogue during the first half of the year, you’ll certainly know that I spent several posts talking about what I call my 50 year plan – so-called because it’s going to take at least the next two generations to implement some of the sweeping changes I seek. Hopefully I’ll be around to see them!
At this juncture I’m going to take my thoughts on the direction our country should go down two paths. One of these paths will be posted on monoblogue for all to see and the other will hopefully find a wider audience sometime in the near-term future.
Starting later this week, I’m going to use most of these pet issues I care about to compare and contrast the Republican presidential candidates and see which ones I think are best suited to run the country. And as an added bonus, I’ll rate the Democrats and minor party ones as well, insofar as I can with some of the limited information available to me from some of the lesser lights.
From the sixteen chapters I originally devoted to the 50 year plan, I’ve whittled them down to 12 issues that I’m going to grade the candidates on. After looking at the issues and rereading the posts, I’ve decided that some are related enough to be combined. I also graded the twelve in order of importance, so what I’ll do is begin the process with the twelfth most important and proceed, probably on a semi-weekly basis, to number one. I’m shooting for this to run on Tuesdays and Fridays starting this coming Friday. I’m also exploring other ways to interact with various campaigns.
I’ll need to work offline as I can for the second path. One goal I had in doing the 50 year plan was to promote discussion. And while that’s occurred in most cases, it’s a case of the limited scope of my readership retarding the progress I seek. In the back of my mind, though, the posts were intended as a sort of outline for a longer form of writing.
All told, my posts dealing with the 50 year plan ran about 22,000 words. In book form, that’s somewhere between 70 and 90 pages. And while a lot of assertions I made were factual, I also wrote this in a Maryland-centric way and I think I need to do further research and study into some of the subjects I delved into. It’s probably not going to change my views on them any, but buttressing my arguments with a more diverse set of facts, figures, and research can only make the argument stronger.
To achieve this I have a goal of, in the next year or so, enlarging the 50 year plan into a book format. If it can get published, great – if not, it’s still helpful for doing monoblogue. I figure, why can’t I write a best-seller? After all, many greats in political writing and thought started out with just an idea and made it into a lucrative career. May as well dream big, huh?
In the interim, I’m still planning on being helpful in enlightening the voting public into the choices that we’ll be faced with here in February and November, 2008. Being into politics as I am, this will be a fun process. Seeing that the Shorebirds season is now over 60% complete, soon it’s going to be “back to school” and Labor Day (the traditional start of political season) is not all that far away. It’s going to be a LONG season since we have the early primary, but it’s also quite possibly a watershed election in American history. My goal is an informed electorate, so stay with monoblogue as we learn together.
