Force Our Hand

Please don't expect linear exposition on the political topic I'm about to blow on about ...

This diatribe is brought to you courtesy of the apparently prevailing power structure in our country, a group of people who bluster and push and preemptively invade countries and threaten reporters and insinuate their narrowly self-righteous views into personal matters of life, health and death, and attempt to override senate traditions and ...

You take my point.

How long did it take you to figure out that you didn't achieve the best results when you bullied your way out of people, when you attempted to force yourself into situations where you weren't wanted?

How long does your self-desired result last when you willfully superimpose it on an unwilling other party?

At what point in your emotional maturation did you discover that persuasion and collaboration often achieved what brute force and conniving failed to produce?

Many years ago, a phrase "the Silent Majority" came into common usage, describing what was thought to be a vast group of individuals who vehemently disapproved of what was being done in their name -- but who declined to vocalize just how unhappy and disillusioned they had become with their government.

I posit that a new Silent near-Majority is emerging ... and that every destructively overreaching, intrusive, self-serving act perpetrated in our name takes us one step closer to throwing off the bullying mindset that is really the few maneuvering the many.

So, go ahead. Keep doing what you're doing. It just makes it that much easier to decide against you. It makes the choice -- in just three years -- that much clearer.

Today's fragrance? The very assertive Serge Lutens Fumerie Turque, with its notes of candied Turkish rose and Balkan tobacco.