"The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it."―Albert Einstein
In Paul Graham's importance article, The Four Quadrants of Conformity, he breaks down people into four categories:
Upper left quadrant: aggressively conventional-minded - the tattletales.Lower left quadrant: passively conventional-minded - the sheepLower right quadrant: passively independent-minded - don't care much about the rules and probably don't even know what they areUpper right quadrant: aggressively independent-minded - the rebels, iconoclasts, outcasts, disrupters that challenge the status quo
The passively conventional-minded is the largest group, and they are led by the tattletales.
The aggressively independent-minded is the smallest group.
In his words, "I'm biased, I admit, but it seems to me that aggressively conventional-minded people are responsible for a disproportionate amount of the trouble in the world and that a lot of the customs we've evolved since the Enlightenment have been designed to protect the rest of us from them. In particular, the retirement of the concept of heresy and its replacement by the principle of freely debating all sorts of different ideas, even ones that are currently considered unacceptable, without any punishment for those who try them out to see if they work."
Innovation happens despite the masses being committed to the status quo. That's why they call this "disruption," and it happens in society and business.
The problem of 2020 is the conventional-minded groups are easily programmed by whatever the media and politicians say.
The aggressively outspoken tattletales end up overpowering the passively conventional-minded because they go along with whatever is easier. Then the passively independent-minded stick to themselves, not wanting to get involved.
Most of the Jews had a passive attitude to the increasing injustices to their people by the Nazis. Most hoped for the best. And many, the aggressive conventional-minded, likely shamed anyone wanting to fight back or speak up. So what you saw was a large number of humans being led to their slaughter with little resistance—this rounding up was done with minimal troops.
I think 2020 might be a turning point for America that historians will talk about in the future. It will be the year that the masses decided that safety was more important than liberty. These future historians will then track every year after 2020—2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, etc.—and show how each new crisis led to a furthering of government control until a year in which it breaks and the constitution is forfeit, and the USA becomes the USSA or some other abomination.
As it goes throughout history, the masses' conformity is WHY there is also so little check on tyranny. It's why oppression and encroaching governments are the RULE throughout history.
History repeats itself; because human nature does not change. And humans have a short memory, so all it takes for the cycle to repeat is the older generation to die out and forget.
The younger generation is woefully lacking in their understanding of history.
If people understood how close we came to World War 3 and total nuclear destruction during the Cold War, maybe we'd see less craziness.
People have no idea how lucky they are and what they have.
Know your history. Don't conform. Always challenge the narrative.