...Doesn’t have to be a physical punch. It can be a shocking emotional jolt or surprising revelation. Imagine suddenly being told out of the blue that your spouse is cheating or your dad is not your real dad or some other completely unsuspected piece of info. For most of us, disbelief would be the first reaction. Yeah if we already suspected that would be different. Then we’d be asking for more info. But if there had not been a whiff of suspicion, the first reaction would be shock, disbelief, then probably an attempt to deny/disprove it - kind of like the Q trolls, eh?...
This bears repeating. If the public is given too much information over too short a period of time the reaction WILL be shock and disbelief and then denial.
Some information will be so shocking the general public if made aware of it, will dismiss all the information.
Does anyone seriously believe the general public would believe or accept Hillary eating babies? Much easier in the long run for them to belief financial graft and selling secrets to other governments. That’s treason, that’s good enough.
Same with many of the others. There are crimes the public can accept, go with that.
You make very worthy points about how much the citizens can accept before going into shocked denial and closed ears & eyes.
I think the public needs to know the full truth eventually.
If someone is actually eating babies, do you think she just up and started doing that overnight? No. Someone gradually conditioned her to think this was a good idea.
In the same way, the public needs to be prepared for the full truth. We can’t be slapped in the face with it suddenly.
If your friend’s husband dies of a heart attack, you don’t call her up and say “hey, your husband is dead”. You break it to her gently. And maybe if she is in the middle of some other serious event - like she’s in labor giving birth, you wait. But you HAVE TO TELL HER. You can’t keep hiding it.
If we don’t learn full the truth, we can’t prevent the same thing from happening again.
I may not choose to learn about the gory details just as I do not choose to watch slasher movies. But I want the info available to adults who choose to know. Hiding the truth is not the answer.
Though I don’t watch horror movies, I have a basic idea of what is in them. If I ever needed to watch them (maybe to understand what my kids had been exposed to or something), I would. I would not want someone “protecting” me from them if I had a need to know. I’d want a warning about the content and I’d want the freedom to choose.
So for the purposes of government secrecy surrounding DS crimes, I want the freedom to choose. I’d want to know the general idea and I’d want to be free to research the details. Perhaps there could be levels of information and warning with each level. Kind of like movie ratings.