No Double Standards of Muttering Behind the Hardline will mutter no more. This makes me so sad but I understand. Goodbye, NDS - I will miss your muttering, dude!
Below is his thoughtful goodbye post, recommended reading for FS bloggers.
Unintended ConsequencesThe original post is here with his contact email.
The thing about a Foreign Service career is that you never know where you will end up from tour to tour. That's what makes it risky to publicly comment on anything even peripherally related to your job. Who ever knows what the future holds. You try to be careful. But do this long enough, and the law of averages says you're bound to trip up at some point. I did. For you conspiracy theorists out there, no, "the Man" didn't get me. I wasn't summoned, admonished, threatened. This damage was self-inflicted.
It's been a few years since I started this blog. I'm ambivalent about the question as to whether I'd do it all again. I think it is probably more prudent to keep a private journal and then write your book after you retire. That said, I sure enjoyed interacting with all of you. I sure enjoyed the blog as a vehicle for making sense of my experiences. I'm a guy who needs to write to organize his thoughts.
I love the blogosphere, and I want to see the Foreign Service community flourish with great commentary on diplomatic life. I'll be continuing to follow you all and look forward to hearing about your adventures. Just be very judicious about the topics on which you write and opine. It's true that you have First Amendment rights; it's true that the "tigers" may never come after you; but the fact is that what you write will always follow you, and what today seems so innocuous may tomorrow be much less so. It's no fault of your own. Times change; the circumstances of your existence change. Life is funny like that.
It has been a great privilege to touch and be touched by so many both within the Foreign Service and those contemplating the Foreign Service as a career. I suppose I could shut the blog down on Blogger -- though nothing ever disappears on the Internet -- but I'm proud of many of the entries I put together over the years, and I think there is great value in many of them for those who want insight into the personal journey that takes place behind the curtain of the public career. So I leave it here for whomever will find value in it.
1 comment:
Thanks for the tribute. It kills me to have to leave, but leave I must. It's been a great run.
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