There’s a powerful, useful way to draw attention to your words.  Just define who your arch-enemy is and then start unloading with both barrels.  Continue the relentless assault.  If you’re lucky, your arch-enemy is one of the undead and just keeps getting back up.  Then you knock him (or her) down again, inflicting mortal damage.  And then they get back up again and…  you both win, because everyone loves a good fight.

I may be unobservant or naive, but I can’t really say that I have an arch-enemy, not a person anyway, especially since the little red headed guy from elementary school left the country a few years ago.  But I digress.

Villains don’t need to be people, though. They can be organizations, places, concepts, etc.  Attitudes can make great villains, too.  It’s easy to hate someone who likes things that you hate.  And it helps when you want to come up with material for blog posts.

There are times when I’ve been tempted to try to pick out a villain, an arch-nemesis for this blog, and use it to help refine the focus of Broadcasting Brain.  Ignorance, manipulation, arrogance, greed, hatred itself  - these are all worthy targets.

Here’s the thing, though:

Defining yourself by your villains, your nemesis, your arch-enemy is too easy.  It weakens you and empowers them.  Look at Lex Luthor:  his sole claim to fame is that he chose Superman as his arch-rival.  Despite his genius and riches, the fact that Superman continues to thwart his schemes continues to define Luthor as an incomplete shadow of a person who exists to get rid of his rival.  J. Jonah Jameson pushed his newspaper to tabloid rag status by defining Spider-Man as a public enemy.  The political right portrays the leaders of the political left as demonic spawn and vice versa.

There’s no doubt that picking a target makes it easy to hit.  But maybe it’s better that the target is a constructive goal or achievement instead of something to destroy.  It could be a harder path, fighting to create instead of destroying, but it could be a whole lot better.  Even if you’re just trying to publish a blog.

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