What If?

“What if 60 Minutes ran a story about all of this--” he said, not verbatim, and all of this referring to the blood cults we were casually talking about-- “with all the proof and evidence that it was real, that it wasn't just random serial killers or murderers, and nobody could deny it?”

“People wouldn't believe it,” I said. “They would find something here or there that they were sure was wrong, or say that it was faked, or that it wasn't true otherwise.”

“But what if they did believe it?”

It was a good question. He is full of good questions.

“They would lose their s***,” I said, slowly.

“Damn right, they would lose their s***.”

This led to a slightly disjointed ramble on my part, which he listened to patiently and more or less agreed with. About belief and disbelief. About the things that he and I take for granted about the way the world works, that other people would probably lose their minds over if it was their life.

There are people, “normal” people compared to those of us here on ATS, who have heard about things we discuss on these boards. Oh, that there's a vast conspiracy here, there, blood cults, people do hear about it. And some part of them concludes that surely...surely life makes more sense than that! Surely, we've got some control over our lives on a cosmic scale, surely there aren't mysterious people meeting in secret places and pulling strings. Surely...?

I don't think that it's because they truly believe the big lie that they choose disbelief. It's that their perception of their lives would completely fall apart were they to actively disbelieve it.

It would require believing things that are difficult to deal with. Things that keep a person up some nights boiling with frustration, losing sleep, with work approaching undeterred with the night ticking over into morning. Things that will, and they will, destroy whatever life a person has as soon as they get involved with them. Things that nightmares and Hollywood blockbusters are made on. And people have got a sense about facts, which ones are useful, which ones are real, and which ones will wreck up an otherwise orderly life. There are safe facts and dangerous facts, and most people with any sense in their heads tend to disregard the dangerous ones.

But what if? What if it was all blown open? What if everything that we have suspected to be true, that we know to be true, was proven true, in a huge and obvious way, to everybody?

Would they really wig out? Or would it pass into the heap of old news along with Presidential war crimes and what Britney Spears was doing a year ago? Would people rise up against the machines of slavery, or would they quickly turn over in their sleep and put it out of their minds like a bad dream?

He said that it would lead to some bad things. People wouldn't trust each other anymore. They would wonder, well, is this guy in on these things? Universal paranoia. I could see that, happening, too. It would make things worse, not better, a world in which there was no trust at all, for fear that thy beloved neighbor might have the opposite of love for you.

Truth is strong, yet delicate. It's strong in that it can move mountains without an effort, but delicate in that it must be wielded carefully to be of any use at all. Truth can set you free, or rip you to shreds.

But... what if?