About

Since 2017, I have been a full-time author self-publishing two books. I am currently working on some new fiction. That writing is interesting, hard and exciting. I recently had a different blog devoted to COVID-19 and politics. I saw the pandemic coming and needed to write about it. However, unlike the disease, that blog ran its course, so I shut it down.

I am a centrist, a moderate, a child of the Enlightenment and a believer in liberal democracy.  Small l.  Small d.  I am equally appalled by the behavior of both ends of the social and political spectrum. I have spent thousands of hours in my personal and academic study of polarization as a historical American dynamic. Critical thinking requires one to hold two opposing ideas in one’s mind and seek synthesis. Hopefully, what I write here reflects that.

Stuff gets stuck in my head. Things I read. Things I see. Experiences I have. I could just walk around mumbling to myself, but it’s better if I have to sit down and think it through as an essay. If someone else has to pause and think too, so much the better. Thinking as a shared experience makes us all better. Breathe and enjoy.

Jim Blackwood, Jr.

Tigard, Oregon USA