Speak Up, Speak Often.

Who knows if I'll stick to this, but I think it's time to dust the cobwebs off this place, square up, and start talking again.

Why? Because there's a few awesome people talking about anything: religion, politics, feminism, thinking, action, etc- and a whole hell of a lot of bullshit.

So, I think I am doing no one any favors by staying silent. In fact, staying silent is the worst thing I could do. Well, next worst. I'll get to that in a second. Like right now, actually.

There's gonna be some new rules for this blog. Specifically, I am making a pledge, right now, to avoid vitriol, fulmination, and other forms of outright nastiness. This is not going to be easy for me. But the only way to have the kind of conversation I want to have is to avoid the pitfalls of the kind I don't. And adding to the bullshit kind of discourse is, indeed, worse than silence, though not much.

Second, I am going to stop hiding this thing, and will post publicly when I update. You, the reader, can feel free to ignore it, and not be a Reader. I don't anticipate needing to have rules about moderation and the like, we'll build that bridge as we come to it.

Third, I don't want you to think that I won't get angry. I will, and I'll let you know when I am. Because one of the important things about discourse is that Having Anger is Okay. It's what you do with it before, during, and after that's important.

Fourth, some rules about the discourse here. For those inclined to reply to comments with, "Entitled to Opinions" and "Hate anyone who disagrees with you" a lot, if I hear anything at all. To these points:

-On the subject of Opinion, please be sure to verify if a statement is, in fact, Opinion or Judgement. Everyone has opinions, but you have to earn the right to make a Judgement. That's why there's a whole profession (hint: called Judges), that do that shit. I will make judgements from time to time. So will you. We should remember that no, we're not entitled to them, and expressing them _might_, in fact, be wrong.

-This is not gonna be a forum for, "well, it's just my opinion." If you want to discuss things here, it'd best be because you're okay with having opinions, or other positions, questioned, argued with, poked at, and scrutinized. What I care about isn't what you think or believe, but why. And if you don't have at least _an_ answer for why, and if you're not prepared to discuss it, then this is probably not the place for you.

Anyway. That's the gist. Like I said, we'll see what happens.

Assuming positions.

I realise I have quite a bit to lay out in the way of both my philosophy in terms of how to actually come to conclusions, given the positions and attitudes of those around. And I have some good illustrative anecdotes as regards that, that I will go over later, as I have a ginormous headache right now.

But I did wish to make the point that being a moderate does not mean rejecting extreme policies-- in some ways, the moderate stance involves the most extreme measures. It means doing things in such a way that, while both sides may bitch and moan because it is not /exactly/ what they wanted (and it doesn't undercut the other guy totally), actually gives them as much of what they really want/need as possible.

Anyway. See Joseph Andrew's Speech on why he switched from Clinton to Obama. You can argue all you want about this particular guy and whether he is honest, whether he's right about Obama, whatever. It doesn't matter. What he is saying in this speech, and his reasons for doing what he is doing now, are Right.

IMHO.

i r srs politiks-wank.

The Problem of the moderate political philosophy is that it is, by necessity, tl;dr. That is to say, the moderate position cannot (or can rarely) be reduced to a soundbite or catchphrase-- you can't sum up, in two lines, a position which has to take into account the positions of both sides, extract the best, discard the worst, qualify where appropriate, define one's warrants (and possibly those of the Others), and then explain where it all came from and why one arranged it as one did-- provide context, as it were-- before one ever comes to a conclusion. And the moderate conclusion is, to paraphrase the poet, rarely neat, and never simple.

Which is why no one ever wants to listen to us. We ramble, we rant-- but we go on too long and half of the listeners don't understand a damn thing that was said.

Nonetheless, that is the purpose here. It is I, das Kainenchen, and my wankish, rambling, tl;dr politiksish opinions for the world to skip over and not actually read. Sometimes extreme sounding, always-- so I hope-- at least somewhat considered. But imho, being a moderate is not always about being a wishy-washy, middling compromiser. It is about also bending both ends around to where they meet at the extremes and get themselves tied in nasty-fun knots.

That's what I like to do.