There are many people who are of the opinion that, before someone's ideas can be credible, he must have personal credibility. This is a very wrong approach, and one that excludes many of the most meaningful contributors. In order to make an original contribution one must think in original ways; and someone who thinks differently from people around him will always see someone portraying him as a lunatic or worse.
A status quo – any status quo, whether good or bad – will have powerful vested interests defending it, that anyone seeking to change it, for good or for ill, will have to confront. Same is the case with any given mentality. A mentality – any mentality, whether good or bad – is there for a reason, and some of these reasons are better than others. It becomes necessary to understand the logic of the mentality, and it becomes necessary to understand the source of the mentality. And then it becomes possible to find out ways to either work with the mentality to influence it for the better, or to refute the mentality and show to others just how wrong it is.
From the position of the mentality – good one or bad one - anyone seeking to change it will be seen as a threat. So it must portray such people as dangerous individuals – sociopaths, narcissists, Parental Alienation Syndrome, what have you. Anyone capable of seeing things as they are has to be branded in this way. Demonize those who have the capacity to see you. Brand them with untreatable disorders. Make up fake research to show that they are evil and can only be evil whatever they do.
Does the status quo have a right to defend itself? It does, and it will be expected that it will defend itself. Out of this consideration, correct regulations need to be put into place to make sure that it does not do wrong in the process. It is rightful that the defenders of any given status quo explain to people the reasons for the status quo and its benefits and warn them against potential dangers of those who seek to change it for the worse – such as for example the Islamists and the Nazis. But when people – the same kind of people as had been responsible for the status quo in the first place – are demonized and targeted for extermination, then that is incompatible with the principles that the status quo claims. The defenders of the status quo must be checked when they take this course.
Once again, those who seek to defend the status quo have a right to do it. What they do not have a right to do is commit in the process vicious violations of human rights. Whether in Iran or in America or in Australia, it is not rightful that people who have the capacity to see what's wrong in the given state of affairs be treated viciously, corruptly or brutally. That is known as tyranny and corruption. And such have no business existing in nations that claim principle, ethics or liberty as their ideals.
Whether by branding as sociopaths or as narcissists anyone who is not happy with any given state of affairs, or by branding with Parental Alienation Syndrome any mother who does not want her child battered, or by branding as freaks and lunatics anyone capable of original thought, the defenders of the given status quo do great wrong. And that discredits the status quo, even if it is a good one. This then gives credibility to the actual enemies of one's country, who can then shout hypocrisy and claim that they have been right about America or the West all along. Even more destructively, it rids the country of its most original contributors and as such undermines its competitiveness. China or India or Russia get ahead when America decides that the people capable of original thought are all narcissists or sociopaths or know-it-all commie nerds.
Anyone with original ideas will therefore have someone wanting to portray him as a lunatic or worse. That, once again, is because he will think in different ways from those around him. That can of course be experienced as disruptive, and it will cause all sorts of problems in his life, which will undermine his personal credibility. However it is these people who make truly original contributions. And it is these people who have the most meaningful things to say.