Reply to post: Re: Tip of the iceberg

London's Metropolitan Police arrest Julian Assange

JulieM Silver badge

Re: Tip of the iceberg

You're really not helping Their cause. If They have a cause. Whoever They are. If They exist at all.

How does someone manage to get hold of potentially world-shattering material, and then go and blow it with an indiscretion like that? If he genuinely was just a lecherous creep who couldn't keep his flies fastened for ten minutes, how did he not get busted long ago? Did all the power just go to his head and make him think he could get away with anything? He must surely have known from the outset that any public sympathy would be lost with the merest hint of any sexual impropriety. Doesn't matter if you stopped someone from pressing the Nuclear Button; if you were so much as caught wanking into a condom in a lay-by on a deserted country road at three in the morning, you'll still never be anything but a sex offender. (On the other hand, some people might prefer to be remembered for having sex with a pig's head than for selling an entire country to a bunch of carpet-baggers.) What was he even playing at, having sex with anyone at all? And why arrest him now, mere hours before the UK was about to leave the EU? (The October extension was not known about when the first moves would have had to have been made.)

But that's the difference between truth and fiction, I guess. Authors have to make fiction make sense. All the loose ends get brought together and tied up in the final chapter or scene, and you're blaming yourself for not spotting the connection much earlier rather than the author or director for deliberately leading you down the wrong path around the point in the story where they thought you might make the connection. (Or else you throw the book at the wall, or storm out of the cinema in a huff.) Real life isn't constrained to a page count or running time, and doesn't care whether or not the audience end up feeling entertained.

I suppose we're just never going to find out. Whether that is because there is nothing to find out or because of some elaborate plot to conceal the sort of unimaginable human rights abuses alongside which even sexual assault pales into insignificance, ultimately won't make a blind bit of difference anyway.

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