Reflections From a Murky Pond

Recently I published a post, which I’ve since deleted. It was quite an angry post because I was quite angry when I wrote and published it. In point of fact, I’m still angry about Julian Assange’s and Wikileaks’ behavior and their willingness to harm, or potentially harm so many people.

That’s not likely to change any time soon.

The problem is that I went too far in my rage and suggested methods of uncovering Julian Assange that went outside the pale of acceptable rhetoric. Doing so hurt some people and angered a great deal more people. For both the hurt and the anger please allow me to tender my apologies.

For that I’m sorry.

Some will now say that I’m apologizing because they believe that they can do me harm. That’s actually sort of true. The effort people have went to in order to attempt to do me that harm showed me more than anything else how hurt and angry they were – and none of them that I know of were people I was angry at myself, so they were, to my mind, all innocent collateral victims of my anger.

For that I’m truly sorry.

I’ve also gone to great and very creative but less than empathic or completely ethical pains to separate my digital persona from my real life. This has resulted in some erroneous beliefs about who I am and may well result in further innocents being inconvenienced, harassed, or harmed in some fashion since the anger of the responses has reached levels even beyond what I showed.

For that I’m truly sorry as well.

Daniel Assange deserves my apology perhaps more than anyone else, but I don’t really want to drag him back into something that I never should have drug him into in the first place, so I won’t belabor that point and risk drawing him back into this.

~*~

It would be both pathetic and hypocritical for me to expect anyone’s forgiveness but those that were harmed or angered needlessly still deserve this apology to accept or spurn as they choose.

Many people rightly claim that President Obama doesn’t listen to the voiced will of the American people. They describe him as disconnected, aloof, superior, and a plethora of other descriptions that all imply that President Obama considers himself “above it all.”

There’s another explanation though…

America Is Speaking But Obama Won’t Listen

H/T to PolitiFake.org for this image. I would have used their embed code but image size constraints of my theme prevented that.

La Senza’s Cup Size Choir brings new meaning to the phrases, “Grace Notes” and “Tidings of Comfort and Joy” with their unusual but entrancing rendition of Deck The Halls.

Senza’s Cup Size Choir Decks The Halls

La Senza’s Christmas angels are seven women who wear bra cups sized A through G; each sings the musical note that corresponds to her cup size. Never has a heptatonic scale looked more beautiful. 😉

Just about anyone and everyone in the Civilized World has heard of Left-Wing Extremists and Right-Wing Extremists and people in general have a picture in their minds’ eyes of who they are, what they want, and what sort of danger they pose.

It’s just part and parcel of our cultures.

What is seemingly never considered, much less mentioned aloud, is the possibility of Centrist or Moderate Extremists.  It’s axiomatic that the Center and those with more flexible or moderate socioeconomic and/or -political agendas and goals are not going to produce Extremists who might resort to dangerous methods to enact those agendas and reach those goals.

Is this anything more than an assumption predicated upon nothing but anecdotal evidence, and is it a wise assumption?

I would have always unequivocally said yes; political moderates are not a source for extremist behavior. Then I got a comment on a recent post:

There is a 3rd, although unlikely option.

That is for those of us who hate extremists to finally get fed up and kill both sides.

This would, of course be the best possible option. It’s about time that the majority, who do not belong to either of the crazies, finally have enough of this crap and put an end to it once and for all.

Unfortunately, we’re all busy trying to make a living off what the extremists are doing to our economies, and don’t really have the time or energy to do the right thing.

But eventually it’s time to weed the garden.

Unsurprisingly, my initial response was a mixture of humor and sarcasm. Then I sat back and thought about the situation and realized that there’s no reason why there wouldn’t be and/or couldn’t be a radical Centrist or Moderate movement that was more than willing to use Extremists’ methods to reach their ends.

There’s certainly no reason that I can think of for why such Moderate Extremists would be an impossibility. An individual’s place on the political spectrum – Left v. Right – doesn’t have any intrinsic bearing upon how committed they are to their ideology or to what extremes they would go to achieve dominance or hegemony.

With an increasingly frustrated and angry electorate extremism of action is always a possibility and, as Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear showed, that anger and frustration is shared by the Centrists who decry both the Left and the Right.

Perhaps we should finally fully scrap the the idea that the Center is “safe” and consider them as a potential source of extremism as well…

So what do you do when your choir is nowhere near large enough to properly perform the song Hallelujah? If your the director and members of this high school troop, you get creative.

Silent Monks Sing Hallelujah

I just about spite my beer – it would have been a sinful waste of a fine Weyerbacher Quad – across my laptop when I first saw this “Silent Monks” YouTube video. 😆

Enjoy, but put your drink down first for your a safety. 😉