While 2020 has been one of the worst years in US history, if not the absolute worst, it has been one of the best years for Ye Olde Blogge. Everything is up: views, comments, referrals from search engines. I guess it goes to show that nothing drives views to a political psychology blog like anxiety and good SEO. So, we’ll proceed like this: (1) Review of major changes to Ye Olde Blogge and (2) the top ten posts of the year.

Major Changes in 2020

I attribute most of the gains to having attended the WordPress online seminar on how to WordPress good. I paid extra attention to SEO and use of social media. It was lots of fun. I met some good people, improved my skills, and got some good ideas on how to better promote the blog.

We’ve made two big changes at Ye Olde Blogge: (1) We changed the theme. And (2) we started running ads. Both are linked. When I started running ads, I didn’t realize that the Tortuga theme wasn’t optimized for them, which is a shame because I really liked the Tortuga theme, especially because it was pirate linked. If you hadn’t realized Calico Jack was a mediocre pirate during the Golden Age of piracy whose only claims to fame were his cool name and having two women on his crew who fought like hell cats according to chronicles of the time. So, the Tortuga theme seemed like it was heaven sent to me.

The Chronicle theme was a good replacement. There were somethings in addition to ad placement that it did better, like the pimped post banner across the top. And some things it did worse, like the single column of blog posts, and the orangey-red banner at the top, which is growing on me. But, overall, it is a great theme and is serving well.

Ye Olde Blogge has earned a whole $3.21 in the final two months of 2020. It all depends on something called CPM or cost per mille (thousand) or click per impression. Whatever it is, it is some weird alchemy shit. Some days I get $0.70 and some days $0.01 for the same number of ads served. I’ve noticed, though, that ads don’t show up very consistently and they are usually WordPress ads. If anyone has any idea about how any of this works, please leave a comment.

The Top Ten Posts

We had 29,932 views or 2,494 per month, and we published 143 posts this year for an average of 2.75 per week. My goal is a minimum of two per week, so that’s pretty good. If you never realized, I try and post every Wednesday and Saturday. I rarely make it on schedule. I’m erratic that way. And, you know, full-time citizen, part-time blogger problems.

We’ll go in reverse order from ten to one just to build drama, I guess. What’s going to be the number one post? Ooh, I don’t know, we better read through to the end to see!

Number 10: On Tyranny Or How to Tell If You’re Living in an Authoritarian Regime and What to do about It

The post was one of several written during the height of the protests in Portland when the Ol’ Pussy Grabber deployed his jack-booted thugs to suppress the unrest. It was inspired by Tim Snyder‘s appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show on Friday 24 July. It covered his advice about how the use of paramilitary forces against it’s own citizens is chief sign of the arrival of authoritarianism in a country. It went on to share his advice that the single best way to resist authoritarianism is through mass peaceful protest.

It garnered 358 views in the month of July and 12 comments. It did it all without any views being driven by Twitter, Reddit, or Mike’s Blog Round Up

Number 9: Mitch McConnell’s Pandering Path to Power and the Cynical Destruction of our Democracy

My favoritest line: “…he is going full authoritarian and gutting our democracy like he was a common Virgil Ward on Championship Fishing so he can stuff that empty shell devoid of life, liberty, and pursuit of anyone else’s happiness other than his, the GOP’s, and the 1%’s with single-party pseudo-democratic authoritarian evil and mount it on the wall of America’s family room…” It goes on to outline how McConnell’s whole purpose in life seems to be to gather power with no other purpose than having power. He just seems to like it.

It piled up 381 views in the merry old month of May with an assist from Mike’s Blog Round Up! Thanks Tengrain!

Number 8: On Tyranny: Eight Lessons for Resisting the Fascisting of America

This post is a sweet review of seven of Tim Snyder’s twenty lessons about sliding into authoritarianism. Re-reading these posts reminds me of how alarmed we all were about the growing fascism displayed by the Ol’ Pussy Grabber and how unalarmed the Repubes were by it all. Their silence meant that they liked what they were seeing and wanted more of it. It was all a test to see if the progressive left would go down like a bunch of wimpy-assed Poud Boys or stand up and push back. Luckily, we stood up and pushed back.

The post garnered a total of 439 views with assists from both Mike’s Blog Round Up and Boat Bits: Sailing in Hard Times. Thanks Infidel! and RLW!

Number 7: America’s Favorite Parlor Game: Diagnosing Trump, the Dementia, edition

Speculation on whether the Ol’ Pussy Grabber had reached another localized fevered pitch in March. The stupid thing is, I don’t recall what incident set it off and I didn’t document it in the post. Mayhaps one of my brainier readers could enlighten us in the comments or just speculate wildly. Anywho, the post summarized the findings of a recent study finding that stress-related disorders earlier in life lead to dementia in later life, especially when a primary vascular component is involved. There is no doubt that the Ol’ Pussy Grabbers life hasn’t been stressful given his executive dysfunction, penchant for chaos, and oblivious blundering and blustering through life. Add to that his fast food diet — did anyone see Supersize Me? — at his level of obesity, he’s got a primary vascular disease. It is very likely, he is suffering from some kind of progressive Neurodegenerative disease.

By year’s end it had racked up 533 views without any thing more than good old-fashioned SEO, I guess.

Number 6: Narcissistic Wounds: Trump’s Coping Mechanisms, Especially on NBC’s Town Hall, Part 2

In the run up to the election, the Ol’ Pussy Grabber foolishly appeared in an NBC-hosted town hall and boy were the coping mechanisms that he uses to cope with his narcissistic wounds ever on display! It was a regular tour of the force that put every Star Wars movie to shame. I was so inspired by watching it that after I finished beating myself with my favorite ball peen hammer, I wrote two posts on it. This one explained the actual coping mechanisms that you could see him using. Part 1 explained the origins of the narcissistic wounds. It wasn’t nearly as popular.

This post received 548 views with a welcomed by friend-of-the-blog, Tengrain, who linked to it on Mike’s Blog Round Up.

Number 5: The Gaslighting Gang of Posts

Way back in September 2016, I wrote this post as an annotated list of gaslighting posts that I had written to date. It had four posts listed in it, which seemed like a lot to me at the time. I was nervous that I would overwork the topic, but like narcissism, it is a quality of Trump that just keeps on giving. Since then, I’ve written forty more gaslighting posts and have updating this post on my to-do list.

I guess it is a testament to the power of SEO that this post shows up on the top ten posts of the year list four years after it was published! HA! It got 586 views this year alone! It garnered most of it’s views between April and October if that means anything to you. It also got 1,086 in 2017, too. It’s a popular post.

Number 4: The Republican Stooge Voter: The How & the Why Of It All

This is another one of those annotated posts posts this time trying to chronicle my attempts to explain how rural Christian conservative white voters can vote against their best interests so consistently. Back at the beginning of the blog , I thought I was being so clever doing this. Little did I know that I’d be writing on this theme year in and year out because it’s difficult to explain people who are so thick, they’d rather die than give up their belief in conspiracy theories.

This year it was viewed 617 times. It’s second biggest year. In the eight months of its existence in its first year (2017), it got 1,530 views, so there’s that. Like I said, there is something about heightened anxiety that drives people to political psychology blogs.

Number 3: GotV Volunteering — UPDATED

Back in January of the year when our biggest worries were impeachment and the upcoming election, I got inspired by Neera Tanden‘s suggestion that we all volunteer in a get out the vote campaign in a swing state. She suggested that we could spend our vacation knocking on doors and calling voters helping to get out the vote. I had happy thoughts of renting an RV this summer and parking it somewhere nice in Pennsylvania and helping out. Little did we know that #COVID19 was coming to unmake all of our plans and rearrange all of our priorities and make a hellvua mess outta of the year.

When it was published, it didn’t make much of a splash. Too many of us were tuning in to the impeachment, but come April through July when so many of us were bored in lockdown or worried sick about the election or both, it really came into it’s own. By years end it had a total of 723 views. All of those were strictly SEO driven., too. See hat good anxiety can do? It’s good for Ye Olde Blogge and it was good for the election, too.

Number 2: Contact the Administrator of GSA and Tell Her to Begin the Transition

In the fiver year history of the blog, this was it’s proudest moment. On 11 November this post went up and it immediately stayed popular until Emily Murphy ascertained that #BidenHarris were the apparent winners of the election, only she didn’t. She hemmed and hawed ans said aw shucks why not just get this thing started… just in case. And, weren’t no body at the White House made her dillydally or let the transition start. That’s how you know they are lying, when they volunteer information and over explain.

Anywho, this was the year of civic and electoral engagement. We all learned more about the process by which a president is elected than we ever thought we’d need to know, and boy, is it a complicated procedure. Unnecessarily complicated. We really ought to change that.

In the few short heady weeks that this post was relevant, it racked up an astonishing 825 views! And, it did it all with search engines and twitter magic! In other words, I was out there pimping my blog!

Number 1: What is Fucking Wrong with Mitch McConnell: Psychopathy? Bad Gas? Sexless Marriage?

This post was originally published back in June 2019. Any time McConnell is in the news, it gets hits. It’s popularity always astonishes me. And, here we are sitting at number one for the year! I guess McConnell has been in the news a lot this year since he is the single biggest threat to our democracy and seems to really really want a single-party pseudo-democratic minority-rule authoritarian regime. And, failing that, he’ll settle for an authoritarian in the White House since by refusing to pass any meaningful legislation, he forces the president to rule by executive order. We saw it with Obama and we’ll see it with #BidenHarris.

Not surprisingly he’s figured in 62 of the search strings that have brought visitors to the blog. There are some amusing searches, too:

• mitch mcconnell psychopath and its variations accounted for most of the searches landing at the blog.
• what is wrong with mitch mcconnell accounts for the next largest number of hits.
• what the fuck is mcconnell up too!!! and any string with fuck and McConnell in it seemed to land people on the post. I guess it was good to put fuck in the title after all.
• what is wrong with mitch mcconnell face these variations started appearing after he was seen in public with purple splotches on both hands and his face. Something had gone seriously wrong with his health. I guess we’ll never know. Don’t be surprised if he doesn’t just drop dead one day soon, though.
• why is mitch mcconnell so awful there were a surprising number of variations of this sedate search phrase. I guess there are genteel people still out there somewhere and some of them are wondering what the fuck is up with Mitch. I feel better, I guess.
• why is mitch mcconnell such a prick and other less genteel versions of this query. I can only hope that they left satisfied with what they found.
• There were the amusing ones that defy categorization:
  • what is wrong with mitch mcconnell brains
  • who thinks mitch mconnel is the biggest problem in terms of thoughtful policy — Hell, McConnell is just the biggest problem, period.
  • why is mcconnell such a miseerable person — Someone pities McConnell more than anything else, right?
  • doesmitchmcconnelowndogd
  • is it true that mitch mcconnell was the inspiration for deputy dog? — Inquiring minds want to know and I wish I knew. I woulda included it in the post.
  • what are the causes and outcomes of mitch mcconnell’s desire for revenge? — Is someone writing a term paper or something? Is Ye Olde Blogge cited in someone’s bibliography?
  • mitch mcconnell is a dick head — And here I was thinking that was Jared or Stephen Miller whose heads bore the greatest resemblances to dicks.
  • mitch mcconnell ugliest fuck ever
  • does mitch mcconell ever smile? — Unfortunately, yes, and if you ever see his face crack open and contort itself into what passes for a smile from Mitch, it will haunt your dreams like it does mine.
  • mitch mcconnell/fucking asshole/fuck you — Somebody sounds pretty angry. I hope the post took some of the edge off or justified finding it.

In this year alone, this post was visited 1,681 times. There were no links from other blogs or columns driving that either. That was just sheer pent up dislike for McConnell causing people to look for answers to the most perplexing question ever, Why does Mitch McConnell hate us for our freedoms? People were angry with McConnell and looking for satisfaction. I hope we supplied some.

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Screenshot of the WordPress state page for Ye Olde Blogge.