Dan Riehl has a very thoughtful post titled "Why The Right's New Energy Needs A Positive Approach," in which he discusses the distinction between defense and offense:

...we've also been playing defense for many years, having to defend the Bush administration, particularly due to the war effort, as it was. Things have changed. It's the Left that has to play defense now. Based on my experience, that can wear you down over time. So, I actually believe we have even more good things to look forward to as the landscape shifts and we surge our way to the mid-terms in 2010.

But defense against a tough adversary can develop a certain mindset. Sometimes it felt as if we almost had to slash and burn everyday just to stay in the game. We have the chance to play offense, now - and offense in a political context often requires a different approach, in part.

I am, by my nature, more of a defender than an attacker. I can't stand mobs, crowds, or group think of any kind. Even when I agree with what they're thinking, if a lot of people are thinking the same way, I tend to question it, even if that means questioning my own premises. OTOH, if someone is being attacked, my instinct is to defend that person. It makes little difference whether that person is in the wrong; I just can't stand group attacks. It borders on a phobia, and it may be some sort of neurosis grounded in childhood, as I have been that way for as long as I can remember. The thing is, this natural tendency I have made it a lot easier to blog when Bush was president, because whether I agreed with him or not, he was under attack all the time. By the left. And while Bush was not my idea of an ideal president, I couldn't stand the left. Every time I went to a party and heard the usual endless attacks on him, I'd look forward to coming back to my blog to even the score. (For those with short memories, in those days, merely trying to point out in the nicest, most polite, most indirect manner that Bush was not a moron and Cheney was not Satan was seen as an affront to common morality and decency.)

To say things are not the same now is an understatement. My political philosophy has not changed one iota, but I face a serious problem in that the psychological dynamics of who is supposed to be attacking and who is supposed to be defending are completely inverted. From a purely psychological standpoint, I don't like seeing anyone hounded by a mob. Not even Barack Obama. And while I'm sorry to say this, the idea of joining in a mob sickens me to the core of my very existence. Again, this is not political, but psychological, and I fear that it cannot but affect my blogging.

In the seven months since January 20, blogging has worn me down as it never did before. Everything is seen as suspect, because everything is suspect.

I oppose socialism and I oppose Barack Obama, and I still think what I have always thought, but my natural distaste for joining what often seems like a constant stream of daily attacks, cranked out every day, all the time, is compounded by a creepy and irrational feeling that if I don't join in, I am on the side of the president, which politically I am not.

But what if psychologically I am?

There is something about a mob mentality that makes me naturally feel a certain affinity with whomever or whatever it attacks, even if I think the person being attacked is human scum. (Yes, I would most likely defend a known child molester from a lynch mob. Or an accused dogfighter from animal rights activists, as long as he isn't dog torturer Michael Vick, whom the animal rights mob loves.)

Considering that even saying that Obama is the president is enough to trigger fierce debate in some circles, where does that leave me?

The worst thing about this is that it often feels like a hopeless no-win. And nothing wears me down like being in a no-win. If I join in the attacks (which I often do), then I feel as if I'm with the attackers and it wears me down. If, OTOH, I don't join in the attacks, then I'm running the risk of appearing to be "on the side of Barack Obama" and that wears me down. Either way, it wears me down, dammit!

As I just said this began on January 20, I thought I'd go back and do a post mortem on my post from that fateful, awful day. I did not want to watch the inauguration, much less blog about it, and I literally had to drag myself to the only working television set, which was still sitting in my former office (a converted garage):

Not only that, but I was actually worried about the Confederate battle flag on the wall behind the empty aquarium, so I cropped the photo of the swearing in.

Should I have? (Interestingly, you can still see the edges of it just behind the aquarium. It had been there for many years, not as an endorsement of the Confederacy, but as a decoration, and I didn't want it to be seen as having any political significance, much less as an attack on the brand-new president.)

On that bleak, depressing day, I was literally grasping at straws, trying to find something, um, maybe, er, patriotic? to say:

It is obvious to me that Bush likes Barack Obama, and it served as a much-needed reminder that we have a new president, and he's the president of the entire country.

Painful as it might be for cynical worrywarts like yours truly, I think we should all wish him and his administration well.

This whole setup of playing offense sucks. Big time.

I'd be dishonest if I didn't admit it.

In a nutshell, my problem is that because I like defending people, I consider defense to be a positive thing. So for years I could feel positive about being positive. But because I dislike attacking people, I consider offense to be a negative thing. So it's tough for me to feel positive about what I consider a negative, and it's even tougher to feel negative about being positive.

It can wear you down over time.