A lot of people confuse cynicism with wisdom, and that sets people up to be susceptible to bigger problems. For example, if you believe the legal system is corr

A lot of people confuse cynicism with wisdom, and that sets people up to be susceptible to bigger problems. For example, if you believe the legal system is corrupt and dysfunctional, it’s very easy to passively tune out and not support reform efforts because you think they’re pointless. We see this a lot in politics where accusations of corruption are used to conflate people who are orders of magnitude apart – a good example of that are the recent classified documents investigations where some faux-sophisticates tried the “both sides do it!” excuse without recognizing the difference between immediate compliance and protracted resistance on contrived grounds.