Mailvox: let the birds chirp

Dread treads a trail of tears:

I’m wasting my time with you and apparently many on this blog. If people will not wake by now, F___ it! The republic is apparently dead. Nobody really cares anymore about the truth. Asking asinine rhetorical questions is enough evidence for me that this nation does’nt WANT to get a clue.

To expect people who have been operating under a given set of assumptions for their entire lives to suddenly throw it away simply because several pieces of public information do not add up is unreasonable. If you subscribe to an opinion, however factually based, that is out of the mainstream, you have to expect that very, very few people are going to agree with you, by definition.

People today are very accustomed to believing whatever the government tells them and they are unaccustomed to thinking for themselves. This is why your neighbor can insist that his stocks are going to go up because inflation is low, then chortle about how the value of his house has increased 50 percent in two years before complaining about the $2.39 price of gas and the $1.19 chili cheese burrito at Taco Bell. Despite the preponderance of evidence before his own eyes, he still believes in the official CPI number even though he has no idea what it is or how it is related to real inflation.

People mock the unfamiliar for three reasons. One, they are absolutely sure of their position and know they have no need to defend it. This seldom applies to conspiracy-related issues, since the vast majority of people on the planet are in no position to know anything. Two, they have so little grounds to defend their position that there is little else they can say and still participate in the discussion. Three, they are secretly afraid that the other party is correct and they are attempting to avoid giving the matter serious consideration.

I don’t expect most people to see things how I do. They simply aren’t capable of it, having neither the historical knowledge nor the emotional distance even if they have the intellect. This surely sounds arrogant, but then, my track record speaks for itself, those errant stock market expectations notwithstanding. Also, for the most part people do not wish to see things how they truly are, and I can’t say that I really blame them. Mankind has a long history of accepting the status quo, and the reason we lionize martyrs and heroes is that so few of us are capable of emulating their courage.

The key to avoiding frustration is to appreciate the value of winning over a single mind. I may not be capable of instigating significant change for the better, but perhaps someone else whose mind has been opened to the truth of things will be. The mockers will always be there, but they are merely expected background noise and should be of no more concern to anyone than the birds chirping outside your window.