{"id":831,"date":"2011-03-24T15:11:01","date_gmt":"2011-03-24T19:11:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/apagansblog\/?p=831"},"modified":"2011-03-24T15:11:01","modified_gmt":"2011-03-24T19:11:01","slug":"lets-see-if-this-works-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2011\/03\/lets-see-if-this-works-now.html","title":{"rendered":"Let&#8217;s see if this works now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Beliefnet has been shifting to a new platform while I have been shifting to a different perspective towards this blog.  Over the past few months I have been increasingly uncomfortable about reporting on the incredibly depraved actions by the \u201creligious\u201d right and its allies, while still feeling it my responsibility as a citizen to do so.  It has been like diving repeatedly into a sewer, and even with a shower afterwards, some filth sticks.<br \/>\nAt the same time the issues that really interest me spiritually are on the long side for a blog where they want me to post 5 times a week.  Or they are very personal, and I don\u2019t write personal to strangers.  Given that I am a political scientist by training and analysis comes easy, this leads to renewed sewer diving.  On the other hand, the political analysis I am best at is also on the long side, technical,  \u2013 and is not explicitly spiritual.<br \/>\nFocusing on the bad guys made a certain kind of sense when there were good guys, or the likelihood of good guys, as alternatives.  I have finally decided the Democrats, including the devious jerk in the Oval Office, are in most (but not all) cases as beyond the pale as the Republicans \u2013 only not quite so sociopathically vicious about it.  They are the good cop to the Republicans\u2019 bad cop \u2013 but both are employees of the corporate oligarchy and representative of an utterly corrupt system.  I vote for them because it is better to be burgled than to be mugged.  Your tastes may vary \u2013 these are mine.<br \/>\nFinally I was completely burnt out \u2013 hence the quiet on this site over the past couple of weeks.<br \/>\nOne solution is to stop blogging.  That may still happen in time.  Certainly it is going to be different from now on.<br \/>\nAt Ostara we invoked Hecate, and She came.  Oh yes, She came.  An odd ritual for Ostara but this year a very appropriate one.  We asked Her to help us find the spirit of Persephone within us during these dark times.  She did.<br \/>\nHopefully one result will be the rejuvenation of this blog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Beliefnet has been shifting to a new platform while I have been shifting to a different perspective towards this blog. Over the past few months I have been increasingly uncomfortable about reporting on the incredibly depraved actions by the \u201creligious\u201d right and its allies, while still feeling it my responsibility as a citizen to do&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pagan-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Let&#039;s see if this works now - A Pagan&#039;s Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2011\/03\/lets-see-if-this-works-now.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Let&#039;s see if this works now - A Pagan&#039;s Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Beliefnet has been shifting to a new platform while I have been shifting to a different perspective towards this blog. Over the past few months I have been increasingly uncomfortable about reporting on the incredibly depraved actions by the \u201creligious\u201d right and its allies, while still feeling it my responsibility as a citizen to do&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2011\/03\/lets-see-if-this-works-now.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"A Pagan&#039;s Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-03-24T19:11:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gus diZerega\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Let's see if this works now - A Pagan&#039;s Blog","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2011\/03\/lets-see-if-this-works-now.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Let's see if this works now - A Pagan&#039;s Blog","og_description":"Beliefnet has been shifting to a new platform while I have been shifting to a different perspective towards this blog. Over the past few months I have been increasingly uncomfortable about reporting on the incredibly depraved actions by the \u201creligious\u201d right and its allies, while still feeling it my responsibility as a citizen to do&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2011\/03\/lets-see-if-this-works-now.html","og_site_name":"A Pagan&#039;s Blog","article_published_time":"2011-03-24T19:11:01+00:00","author":"Gus diZerega","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2011\/03\/lets-see-if-this-works-now.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2011\/03\/lets-see-if-this-works-now.html","name":"Let's see if this works now - A Pagan&#039;s Blog","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-03-24T19:11:01+00:00","dateModified":"2011-03-24T19:11:01+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#\/schema\/person\/d94ab0155d2780a0526af373b5c543f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2011\/03\/lets-see-if-this-works-now.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2011\/03\/lets-see-if-this-works-now.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2011\/03\/lets-see-if-this-works-now.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Let&#8217;s see if this works now"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/","name":"A Pagan&#039;s Blog","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Gus diZerega","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#\/schema\/person\/d94ab0155d2780a0526af373b5c543f2","name":"Gus diZerega","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/4f6\/4f6b5a87d91376eaf8d126df301ab8cdx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/4f6\/4f6b5a87d91376eaf8d126df301ab8cdx96.jpg","caption":"Gus diZerega"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/author\/gdizerega"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=831"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":835,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions\/835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}