As far as I understand, this is a political blog, not a "raising of your consciousness" blog, or a "how to improve your relationship with your significant other" blog.

um, not exactly. if you stick around, you'll stretch the distance of your understanding. politics affects everything else, so is always present, but ET's power comes from the intersection of the political with the personal, mostly through discussions about energy and economics, shot through with all sorts of other things, and mostly how they all interconnect.

some of us believe it does have a 'consciouness-raising' effect to learn more in an amiable atmosphere, and as for significant other stuff, well it's not much for that, though a good diary on the subject may break the record for number of comments, seeing how universal the subject is!

there are much more focussed political (and relationship=orientated) blogs around, but ET has something else going for it (la grande melange?) that makes it unique. i hope you get it, and just skip the diaries that don't serve your needs. you certainly have a lot of interesting knowledge to share.

pure politics as an abstract doesn't really exist, insofar as it's the effect on us is where the rubber meets the road...

so we hash it out.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty