Perri Nelson's Website 

Small things

Apparently small things do matter. I spent most of my weekend on my back because of small things… so small you need a high-powered microscope to see them. That wasn't the way it was supposed to go, at least, it wasn't the way I thought it should go. Apparently someone else had other ideas.

ELAshley tells me I'm preaching to the choir because the congregation is either deaf or asleep, or both. I suppose that maybe in some ways that's the case. The people that I most need to reach with my message aren't likely to be interested in it in the first place.

I know that my readership is fairly small, around 38 visits a day or so at the latest check, and that doesn't bother me. I also know that most of the people that read my work are already of a similar mind to mine in a lot of respects. I enjoy reading your comments, even though I'm not really telling you anything you don't already know.

I do know of at least a couple that read my work that don't agree with what I have to say. I wish those people would respond in the comments. I won't name names, but you know who you are. Come on… that's really what the comments sections are for in the first place. If you disagree with what I write, say so in the comments. Just keep personal attacks out of it and we'll be fine.

At my peak readership I was seeing maybe 80 to 100 hits per day, with occasional but rare traffic far above that. At my peak readership I wasn't really writing anything worth reading though. Texas Fred was right about that (not about much else in that argument, but about that he was right). Hopefully If you are one of those few that read my blog now that read it back then, you'll notice the differences. Since I've decided to resume blogging, I'm more interested in the quality of the ideas I express than quantity of posts I put together.  If I don't have something to say, I'm not just going to throw up an "obligatory" post devoid of content. Hosting open trackback parties or linkfests may be an effective way to boost traffic and get lots of links between sites, but it's not really blogging. Instead it's link whoring and while it might boost your site a bit, it's not going to keep people coming back.

You also don't see long blogrolls on my website anymore. Oh yes, the blogrolls page still exists, and I still host the Blogs Against Nancy Pelosi blogroll, but if any blogroll owners want to drop me from their blogrolls I don't mind. I know that that sort of thing drives traffic to sites as people will occasionally click on a link they find on a blog they frequent. I get a few hits a week that way still… mostly from sites that belong to the Dumb Ox Blogreggator, which surprises me a bit, because even after telling me he was going to drop me I'm still on it, and I no longer qualify under the terms he's established for it.

The links you see in my sidebar are to other blogs that I own or contribute to, or to the blogs of people whose work I find truly worth reading (please, don't be insulted if you're not on the list). The last two are to friends of mine from BlogShares whose blogs I don't read that often, but I occasionally click on the links to see what they've had to say lately. Having said that, you'll notice that the list is fairly short. It's short for a reason. I'm not going to put something on that list unless its either for personal reasons, or it's something that I would honestly recommend to anyone that they read. If it's there, it means something to me.

I'm not going to play the SEO game with my website. I did for a while, but I won't anymore. If that means my readership stays low then that's the way it is. I write to satisfy myself anyway.

I'm voting for John McCain this November. I won't be voting for any third party candidates, and I'm not voting for the Marxist or the Stalinist being fielded by the Democratic party. I'm a conservative, and I'd like to see conservative ideas win at the polls, but I'm also a realist.

Barack Obama is a Marxist. There's no way I'll vote for him. He and I agree on absolutely nothing in terms of policy. Hillary Clinton is a Stalinist and a habitual liar. I won't vote for her either. She may, when it gets down to it, believe in the proper use of military force, but there's nothing else in her policies that I could agree with, and I'm very far less than certain that expediency wouldn't win out over national security with her anyway. I know that I could never trust a word that tumbled out over her lips.

Ralph Nader is simply an anti-capitalist masquerading as a consumer advocate, and a has-been at that. Voting for him would be like joining the ranks of the brain dead. He has no chance of winning, and the 1/2 percent or so that might vote for him should wait until their frontal lobes grow back before putting a stylus to a ballot again.

Bob Barr may have been one of the most conservative members of Congress. Even so, he's got a snowball's chance in Hell of winning the general election in November, especially not as a Libertarian. Too many people associate Libertarians with loons for that party to have much of a chance, and that's truly a shame. Some Libertarians have been real loons, but people like Bob Barr could give the Libertarian Party a shot at real legitimacy. I'd vote for him over McCain, if I thought he had a chance to win. Unfortunately, third parties are simply not likely to receive a significant portion of the vote, even if the Libertarians are likely to win more than double or triple what Nader's going to win. 

John McCain isn't a conservative, and it's going to really pain me to vote for him, especially with an alternative like Bob Barr running. He and I agree on so little of substance. Still, there are a few things we do agree on, and a love for this country is one of them. A desire to see our nation succeed is another.

The thing is… the vast majority of the adult population of the United States doesn't vote. The vast majority of the adult population of the United States doesn't pay any attention to current events. Significant numbers of our population haven't even got a clue when it comes to civics. I even had one commenter last year that wondered why we even had individual states with their own state laws. Given the general apathy, and the fact that most voters are either going to vote straight- ticket Democratic candidates or straight-ticket Republican candidates, voting for a third party candidate for President almost guarantees that whoever wins it won't be who you wanted to.

Of course, passing over voting for someone you'd like to win for someone more likely to win means that you won't get your first choice either. But if your second choice has a better chance of winning than your first choice, voting for your first choice means one less vote for your second choice, increasing the chance that a worse outcome will result. I'd rather not see a vote for Bob Barr mean that Obama or Clinton was swept into office, especially when Ralph Nader won't be coming close to offsetting those votes.

…and so I'll vote for the person most likely to have a chance to win that comes the closest to thinking the way I do. Even though he's not the man I 'd prefer.

And come to think of it… It's commenters like Jeannine that remind me… I may be preaching to the choir most of the time, but every now and then someone in the congregation wakes up.

Trackback URI for this post: http://perrinelson.com/track.aspx?postid=1151
Permalink URI for this post: http://perrinelson.com/2008/4/7/1151.aspx

Angel responded with:

hey there Perri...thanks for the honest heartfelt post...I still dont know if I can vote for McCain unless he rescinds his idea of allowing millions of illegals amnesty!..ugh!! :)

Perri Nelson responded with:

On that particular subject at least, I think he may have learned his lesson. The McCain Kennedy amnesty act was dead on arrival because of the overwhelming objections of conservatives and ordinary Americans. It was yet another case where the congregation woke up for a brief moment, if only to assume a more comfortable position and fall back asleep.