I have decided to stop blogging. The decision is entirely my own and, I think, it came as a surprise to Echidne and my fellow guest bloggers when I told them last week. I greatly admire their work and hope they and other guest bloggers will continue here for a long time. This is one of a handful of truly original and important blogs and I was deeply honored to be asked to contribute to it.

The form of blogging doesn’t lend itself to what I’m trying to do. That is the reason I’m not going to continue. Dealing with complicated issues, avoiding the customary language, a shorthand that is a hindrance to real thinking, doesn’t work. It would seem, more often than not, readers come away thinking I’ve said the opposite of what I tried to make clear.

But the typical ways of talking about issues, trying to make complex realities into easily recognized and manipulated building blocks, only leads to propaganda and the results that you can get from that degraded form of discourse.

These issues can’t be reduced to a series of tweets and I will not distort them in order to attempt a deceptive simplicity that is no better than lying. I can’t make people read what I’ve actually written or prevent them from misrepresenting what I’ve said. That is the real sticking point. I can choose to stop.

If I can figure out another way to do this on a blog, I might try again. For now, especially in this economy, my style doesn’t seem to be useful for that.

I hope that those who are serious about the fight for equality and democracy, to save the environment and to prevent injustice will continue to be active. I will, just not in this form. It is for good this time.

yours truly,

Anthony McCarthy