Do you want to know what I find most telling, and disappointing, about the [mental] state of American’s these days? Just how hard they are willing to fight to remain ignorant, stupid, and oppressed simply because their personal beliefs and misconceptions have convinced them they are “free” and actually know what is going on around them, despite irrefutable facts and evidence to the contrary. More depressingly, they don’t and won’t believe or understand what is being done TO them, in their own name, by those to whom they entrusted the very power being used to oppress them.
It would seem that most of the American people would rather be right in their unfounded beliefs (on just about any subject you can imagine) than they would in learning why their beliefs on a given subject are incorrect. These people actually prefer the fallacies established in their own minds over the more than ample facts and evidence proving their beliefs to be based on either demonstrable misconceptions, various forms of dis/misinformation, outright lies, or some combination thereof. In my entire life, I have never seen this level of blatant and willful individual ignorance and stupidity defended with such venom, vehemence and vociferousness as is displayed by such people on social media. Probably because it is the only place they could do it in the manner they do and still manage to avoid getting punched in the mouth for what they say and claim they would do if they could “only get my hands on you.”
What further astounds me is how many of them there are, and how they are so willing to be led around by the nose when it comes to the [mis]information they receive and how they process it, no matter how painful and detrimental that information may eventually prove to be to them. For instance, at some point in life, whether you’re dead broke or fabulously wealthy, you may need the kind of services that the majority of attorneys are willing to steal good money to convince you they can provide. Even so, virtually anyone who has had the misfortune to need services from an attorney will usually wind up paying him/her far more than they are worth or actually earned, and, in many cases, some of those people will have forked over virtually every dime they have.
It is axiomatic that, as a general rule, most reasonable and intelligent people already believe that the vast majority of attorneys are scumbags, liars and thieves, and rightly so. And yet, there are still so many people who, almost without question, will place more faith and credit in the advice and information from such a knowingly biased and tainted source as that of an attorney, than there are those who would try to learn and understand a subject for themselves. And they do it despite knowing that most attorneys are, first and foremost, self-serving narcissists who will try to convince and advise their clients in a manner that servers to further those ends and line their own pockets.
To me, that way of thinking is metaphorically comparable to being stuck in the middle of a desert that you are somewhat familiar with, but not really an expert on. And you are stuck because the tour guide that brought you all the way out here has suddenly left you high and dry. But, s/he was kind enough to tell you about a watering hole located “somewhere over there” before they departed. So, by the time you actually manage to find the watering hole, you are thirsty enough that you are ready to jump in and start drinking.
Then, just before you jump in and start gargling your way back to the surface, you begin to suspect that your tour guide may have deceived you and that the watering hole s/he sent you to is foul and poisonous. Now, it really doesn’t matter one bit whether you decide to treat the water as poisonous because of experience or intuition, it only matters that all the dead animals, reptiles and insects you see lying around the pool are a pretty good indication that it’s true, and that your tour guide is either incompetent or a self-serving liar who doesn’t give a crap about your welfare at all either way.
Most people of reasonable intelligence who have any real-world experience with attorneys will understand that the disappearing tour guide in this scenario is representative of attorneys in general, especially criminal defense attorneys. They will always ask to be released from the case when you need them most, when it becomes too much work, or to continue as your counsel would demonstrate that they are actually incompetent and get them sued for malpractice. Experienced people will also tell you, unless you have very deep pockets, attorneys are far more interested in just taking your money and running than helping you fight back in a time of trouble. These kinds of people are representative of people who are like me. We are the ones who began to suspect that the tour guide was intentionally misleading us so as to ensure that we couldn’t, and wouldn’t, be able to survive in the desert without them.
Now assume that you are a different kind of person than people like me are. You are the kind of person who does not recognize the significance of all the dead things around the watering hole and are incapable of realizing that your tour guide was actually plotting against you the whole time. And now you are the one stuck in the desert under these same circumstances and conditions.
Meanwhile, across the sand and rocks about a quarter-mile away, you see someone waving to you, someone like me who has learned how to survive in the desert without the tour guide. You can barely see the other person. Fortunately, you can also barely hear them. They are screaming, “I’ve found good water! Don’t drink from that pool, it’s poisoned! Come over here and drink the good water!”
Now, being the kind of person you are, self-centered, self-absorbed, and thoroughly convinced of your own beliefs and understanding of things (mainly because of how they make you feel about yourself and your life circumstances rather than any factual basis ), you start to analyze the situation as follows; 1. you don’t know anything about this other person; 2. you’ve never met or seen this other person before; 3. you have no idea how this other person came to be here in the same place as you, but, here they are; 4. You have no idea where this other person came from or how long they’ve been out here; 5. you presume that if you can’t survive all alone out here, then neither could this other person, so they can’t really be of any help or use to you now; and 6. first you begin to presume, and then convince yourself, that, this other person is just someone else who is as stuck and alone in the middle of the desert as you are.
So, right away you have begun to judge the other person based solely upon all of your own unsubstantiated personal beliefs and presumptions so as to convince yourself that they cannot know or understand any more about this desert and the situation at hand than you do, probably even less you imagine. After all, they are out here in the desert too, so you must be the smarter and more knowledgeable of the two of you, right? Therefore, you just write them off as not knowing what they are talking about when it comes to knowing whether or not your water is poisonous or if the water they are telling you about is actually any better to drink.
Now, what I find the most strange about you people who think like this is, despite knowing that the other person is NOT a mirage, and that they obviously already know that the watering hole you are about to drink from is poisoned, you would rather simply presume the other person is crazy and doesn’t and couldn’t possibly know anything at all about whether or not the water source you chose is safe to drink from. Thus, people with your kind of mindset would rather think about fighting and arguing with the other person who is merely trying to help you just so you can continue believing you were smart enough to have chosen correctly despite the clear and convincing evidence to the contrary. At least, it would be clear and convincing evidence to any normal person with an open mind and the ability to question what they think they already know. You, however, are the kind of person who has such a diminished mental capacity for accepting and processing new and contradicting information that you would rather go ahead and drink the poisoned water that’s already right in front of you just because you are too lazy, dismissive and unwilling to do the work required to travel a little farther across the desert to a source of good water.
I can only surmise that people like you process things this way because your pride and cognitive dissonance simply won’t allow you to believe and accept, that, not only is it possible, there really are many different watering holes in this same desert IF you understand how to find them, some good, some bad, and that there is always going to be someone else who knows the one from the other even when you don’t or won’t admit that you can’t tell the difference. You are the kind of person who finds it even harder to believe that someone who is actually supposed to know the difference, and is supposed to tell and direct the rest of us who may not, really doesn’t know at all, or simply doesn’t care. Like your tour guide. In fact, you are so dead-set on reconsidering your erroneous presumptions and conclusions that you won’t even accept the self-evident truth that it was your original tour guide who pointed you to the poisoned water and made you presume it was safe to drink.
So, you insist on going forward in life hanging tightly onto those incorrect beliefs and presumptions despite one very clear and irrefutable fact that you refuse to admit, even to yourself; that you knew only enough about how to survive being stranded in a desert that you allowed yourself to be guided by someone else to a poisoned watering hole, while never once considering just how much better off you would have been if only you had bothered learning and knowing for yourself how to locate one and determine that it is good to drink from.
By the way, you must still be thirsty from being stranded in that desert, would you like to try a piece of this new chewing gum your attorney recommended as “mouthwatering?”

So I ask you, how do you help the kinds of people who share this mental state of idol worship for “authority” figures without a clue? Should we even try? What’s the point if they don’t want your help or to know the truth? What if they truly are happier drinking from a pool of poisonous lies and disinformation than they are a pool of verifiable truth, no matter what the end result will be? If any of you figure out these answers, please let me know.