The Inevitable Commentary About the Julian Assange Affair...

Allrighty, then...

So now Julian has been arrested in London after living more or less under lock and key in the Ecuadorian Embassy for seven years.

I'm not entirely sure what he can expect now, but it probably will include extradition to the US, followed either by a trip to some Federal Prison... or, who knows, maybe he'll "mysteriously disappear" without any clear explanation.

A thorny affair...

It's curious to watch, though, how Julian gets painted in so many different lights.

Maybe he's a "freedom hero" who exposed the truth about the lies and deceptions of shady government operations, and is now the poster boy for how brave people of the world are "wrongly treated" for standing up for what is right and blowing the whistle on evil and oppression.

Then again, maybe he's just a crook for thinking you can just hack into whatever computer systems you want, when you want, and take whatever you want and make it public, regardless of consequences to international security and world stability. But was he even a hacker? Or did he merely provide a vessel for other whistleblowers to share their findings?

What Just Happened... REALLY?

Looking at the bigger picture, what does the whole Jullian Assange Affair really represent?

What is hidden, and what is visible?

Freedom, I suppose. Or how we interpret freedom, and where people fall on the scale of how much or how little freedom actually consitutes "freedom."

Specifically how much and which freedoms should we have to (figuratively speaking) declare that the emperor is wearing no clothes?" Should we go as far as to be voyeurs in said "emperor's" life, publishing every moment said emperor might even have touched himself inappropriately? Wouldn't that make us the very "invasive" thing we're actually fighting against?

People tend to fall on the extremes and make a lot of "noise," but it strikes me that we are nearly always dealing with vast gray areas. To oversimplify: "How do we treat committing a crime to PREVENT a crime?"

To say that we only support a law to the extent that the outcome it delivers supports our paradigm and worldview... isn't that a hypocrisy that places us in precisely the same category of skullduggery as those we are exposing?

We often avoid looking that the ways these situations can be slippery beasts... if the "heroic efforts" of someone who supports our belief system saves 300 lives, but results in 300 people dying who do not support our belief system... where does that place us — morally and ethically — on the greater scale of "Being A Human?"

Does it all just descend into a glorified cafeteria food fight over "ours" and "theirs," with no effort to navigate to a mutually acceptable common ground?

View of Turtle Pond, Marin Co., California

Some of the things I find interesting about this whole affair:

The "price" of Julian Assange is evidently $4.2 billion... or am I the only one who finds it curious that just a month after the IMF agreed to give Ecuador $4.2 billion in loans/financial aid to their economy... Julian Assange is arrested after having lived for seven years on the Ecuadorian Embassy?

The inconsistency of President Trump, who's evidently suffered a case of "spot amnesia" since he seemed quite informed about Wikileaks and Assange during his Presidential campaign, but now claims it's "not really his thing," even though the "thing" that's "not his thing" certainly was a factor in his getting elected.

Of course, knowing Trump, he may be some "Trump card" up his sleeve... like a protracted public trial in the US, and then suddenly a magnanimous Presidential pardon, or something. Pretty much nothing is "too unlikely," with that guy...

Well... I think I'm going to pause here, and set this post free. I typically avoid political discussions, as they tend to bring out the worst in people...

That said, do share your thoughts and impressions! Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!

(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 190411 20:59 PST
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