If I knew then what I know now, I'd have been much stupider then.

Just had a thought, don't know what it means or where to go with it, but I noticed that when I'm looking at internet message boards and such, I look at what's being posted and pay less attention to who the poster is.  This made me think of a standard leftist insistence on knowing 'who' is saying something.  That's like a way to deliberately avoid thinking, looking for some alliance or connection to the speaker, or the reverse with an opponent.  It's a way of avoiding whatever is actually being said.

What strikes me is that seems to go to the core of their mindset, it's an avoidance of thinking about ideas in-and-of themselves and self-identifying with whoever spoke.  Of course this is what they accuse their opponents of doing but thinking about it, this stands out as a basic personality trait.

The reason this stuck out for me was in that it reminded me of a story about a military battle that's not particularly famous, but the winning side got their victory plan from a leader who wasn't particularly well-liked.  The point was that even hate-filled enemies can have good ideas so thinking people can't just ignore them.  This was shown further by my then-military commander and sergeant-major who started trading even more details about the battle I had never heard of, showing how much thought each of them had given, as did their colleagues and instructors.

[I will mention that a longer description of this anecdote is included in the book whose title I got from this very essay.  Buy it and love it.]

It's natural to look at who's saying something and for that to make a difference of how we react.  An obvious example is that, as kids, we have to listen to adults and we learn fairly early to single out mommy and daddy as the important ones.  The military certainly uses this, emphasizing it with higher ranks who usually have to be listened to.  Just having to look at a person talking to you lets you know who they are and what relevance or relation they have to you or the subject at-hand.

Yet there is definitely a difference how some people focus on the idea being presented.  There is those who automatically respond with 'you sound like Fox/Rush Limbaugh' or 'you talk like a Trump/Putin/GWB/etc. supporter' and is probably a major influence on dismissing anything they don't like as 'racist/homophobic/war-monger/anti-trans/anti-woman/etc.'  It's like an automatic reaction that's positive or negative.

One benefit I see in focusing on the idea rather than whoever said it is the way it encourages thought.  Is it a good idea, at least partially?  Does it include something I'm missing from my perspective?  Is it expressing the same thing as my viewpoint does but in a different way?  If so, what makes it different?  Is one viewpoint better than the other?

Furthermore, it demonstrates individual differences and the possibility of growth and/or advantage.  If the ideas you've expressed are better than mine, I can learn from that.  If they aren't better than mine and I recognize that, then I can either help you learn or I can keep silent and see a benefit from you going the wrong way.  These are multiple options which only come from focusing on 'what is said' rather than 'who said it.'

This is reinforced by the way the enemy comes off as identical duplicates, reciting the same slogans and catchphrases, changing them on a regular basis to seem more up-to-date.  They may not even know who told them what to say, but whoever said it knew that they would follow the example.

Now that we know that, what do we know?  Anybody?  Little help here.

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Are the vaccinated coming to realize that the unvaccinated were right?  Maybe I'm just desperate for something resembling hope but that is almost-certainly growing among an ever-increasing number of people.  Just the fact that our rulers and their pet-media show zero interest in the number of people catching "sudden death syndrome" shows the rest of us what they're really going for.

What happened to every life being precious and every death is a tragedy?  We can see other countries find that something is going very wrong with this vaccine, why are our rulers ignoring that?

This is something that would definitely be building at the lowest level, those you talk to personally, at least the ones you know are on your side.  They see the deaths too and are just as worried.