After many years of writing op eds, and commenting on those of other folks, here on OpEdNews.com, it is distressing to find the acceleration of the pursuit of paranoia by more and more authors and commenters. One is reminded of the old tale of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, who cries Wolf falsely and frequently, so that -- when the Wolf finally does arrive -- nobody believes the Boy anymore, and he is eaten, along with many villagers.
The relevant lesson based on this story is that, if everything is a conspiracy, then the true meaning of conspiracy is lost. And if every OpEdNews.com writer who challenges some of those alleged conspiracies is called an idiot or a warmonger, or just plain unenlightened, then ad hominem attacks replace sound reasoning and critical thinking.
And if some authors on OpEdNews.com take steps to forbid comments on their articles, for whatever reasons, as has happened recently, then defensiveness replaces openness, and so-called conventional wisdom replaces the quest for truth and progress.
The tone of many OpEdNews.com comments has become so paranoid that the point of the article is lost in the rhetoric of conspiracies and end-of-America assertions. Critical thinking is badly needed, as is more light and less heat.
