Unless they slow down when they go back there to the rear to stick their heads up their asses.

Skeptic, thanks for validating my view in some respects, but I get more mileage out of being a subversive friend. Think of me as a warm, liquefying suppository up the butts of the worst assholes. When I love someone really well, accurately, they begin to chafe at their own rigidities. It's the slow way but I get a lot more done that way. They come to me after the kind of attack you describe for comfort... and find me, smiling, but expecting them to actually THINK. Very sneaky. Then they go off and start infecting others the same way. It's pretty amusing if I can see it happening, sometimes, and deeply satisfying.

Underneath all that rigidity is usually a terrified screaming infant trying to remain human. It's the ones I can't keep close to because I am outnumbered that get me... so I try to work up some partners in the effort, first off, to spread things around.

I'm just discouraged about it. I do actually know how to do this work and when the time comes to speak boldly I usually can't resist doing it no matter what it feels like will happen as a result. I'm not quiet these days because I am intimidated as much as because I have not been terribly well. I'm just tired, and not at what I know has been my best, and haven't figured out yet how to do it even smarter.

There IS a place for the approach you describe, and others have the gifts to take that approach. Mine just lie in doing things one on one most of the time, until I gain a visible role that facilitates positive exhortative speech to inspire and energize the good guys while I continue to build background alliances with the "bad" guys. I don't use these gifts as well as I should, but they are the ones I have.

~S~