Everything everyone does is a trick, a conspiracy or *unforgivable* incompetence. Except you, of course. Only you (or your friends) are earnest & rational. And when you mess up, especially when stressed, you deserve benefit of the doubt, because humans make mistakes.

*Your* decisions have to be evaluated fairly, in context. And if these are decisions that affect others, that too has to be evaluated in context of what was actually possible. When it comes to you, risks and failure rates are a probability to minimize, but they cannot be removed.

You are the only person whose critical, high-level work is necessarily dependent on other people. And when they screw up, you feel the unique weight of being blamed unfairly. This is a unique experience that has and never will happen to anyone else. Only you.

You are the only expert in the only field that experiences an acceptable failure rate. You are incorruptible. And where you are corruptible, it’s because you’re not naive, you’re pragmatic and know how the world works. You have never singularly misunderstood a statistic or person or situation.

And when you do, it’s because everything is a “two-way street”, it’s all part of an iterative process.

You cannot understand why this perfect imperfection is so hard for others to achieve.

If only everyone could read and see, the way you read and see. If only they worked as hard as you. This is why when you fail, there are a hundred good reasons, any learning from it is specific and technical, never a hint at a long-term personal flaw.

Only you can see propaganda. Only you can accuse others of being unmindful agents in spreading it. When someone else sees you or your friends doing it, they’re being hysterical or ignorant or malicious and there’s a perfect pejorative out there to use on them, a perfect socially-unacceptable category to place them in.

Because you would never indulge in propaganda or spread it. If someone thinks you did, they’re brainless automatons, and you pray for their minds and souls.

And there’s another awful thing that only happens to you: sometimes it’s not as easy as apologizing. See, sometimes you’re disadvantaged by apologizing– too soon or in the wrong way. Sometimes you are being manipulated into one. This happens only to you.

You have a unique dark side: skeletons in your closet. Things that people will stick to you forever. A lot of it is not even true– there’s context. But it’s inspiring how *you* drew wisdom from that darkness instead of letting it keep you from doing work in the public eye!

By some sad, inconceivable happenstance: you had interesting but flawed mentors and heroes. But you’re allowed to pick & choose the “good” stuff. To interpret, get defensive and dodge criticism. Because no one else understands the appeal of old, wise, flawed things. Only you.

Weird how these things keep happening to *only* you or your peers though.

Maybe you are only human, and only you are human?
Yes, that must be it.