Nunc coepi.

Now I begin—again.

After allowing this space to lay fallow following a time of admittedly sporadic and half-hearted attempts at blogging-so-called, I begin again. I, the Minister of Culture, return to the dark and empty Minicult edifice—standing silent and unattended, with a quiet dignity adorned by respectable Corinthian columns—to flick on a solitary light.

In my absence, an entire presidency has come and gone and the nation now stands, once again, on the precipice of the Great Struggle. That trembling anxious moment when half the country plus one or two percentage points of fickle voters here and there exercise their divine democratic right of electing someone to visit misery and terror on the other half of the country.

Shall we have a fascist Dicator who, bloodied and vengeful, roars into office to wreak his vengeance and crush under his boot-heel all non-white, non-cishet, non-male units of humanity? Or shall we have a cackling commie Witch who desires nothing more than to throw all our values and all our traditions—and a great many of our children, too—into the great grinding wood-chipper of Progress?

Ah, Democracy! Come like a driving wind to blow us all away!

The Minister will be here, broadcasting on an obscure emergency frequency, to yell into the storm: “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!”