It was 2004 and I’d been reading Samuel Johnson’s Rambler essays, which were published serially from 1750 to 1752 in a “twopenny sheet.” The way Johnson articulated his discontent during the reign of George II, that belligerent boor who involved Britain in a number of useless wars, seemed apt to my own time. The U.S. had its own George 2, who had started his own useless wars and was driving the country into debt and recession to pay for them.

It was clear that something was very wrong with the country to have voted George 2 to a second term. But the fault was not so much George 2’s as that of the people who had elected him to office. Since the 1980s, republicans had repeatedly driven the country into recession and debt with tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest ten percent. They had stratified the economy, sacrificed blood and tax dollars abroad, defunded the public sector and added over a trillion to the national debt. With all that, the day-to-day conditions in which most Americans lived had only worsened.

The polarized politics, senseless discourse and impassioned parochialism fostered by a fractured and partisan media were out of hand. Anything in the way of facts-based debate was extinct. So I decided to publish my plaints about the state of things in the cheapest and easiest way possible, a blog. I titled it The Philippic in honor of the Greek orator Demosthenes, who admonished the Athenians against the tyranny of Philip of Macedon, giving rise to the word philippic, which means a sort of rant. Though my intention was aligned with Johnson’s, “to inculcate wisdom or piety” (Rambler 208), I also wanted to entertain, as well. At the time, I had just read Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary and decided that a measure of sarcasm, erudition and summary wit would leaven the dough.

I admit that I had hoped The Philippic would augment the income of my low-paying editing job. For, as the Johnson himself put it, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” Well, all I can say is, it didn’t and I proved a blockhead. But I’ve enjoyed writing my philippics more than writing for pay, and hope to transmit some of that enjoyment to the reader.

Thanks for being here,

–Jan DiVincenzo