It is somewhat mentally taxing when everyone is running around insisting that 2+2=5 and you're pretty sure (some doubts!) that 2+2=4. My mental health at the time was not the most important thing, but having the overwhelming weight of public discourse in favor of the Iraq war, based on some pretty obviously not true things and transparently ridiculous propaganda, was actually quite the strain.
I suppose the second time I felt that way was in the post-financial crisis Era of Austerity. Watching economists just chuck everything they had claimed they knew out the window, justified in part by a silly paper with an excel error (it was silly even without the error!), and then when the error was uncovered, saying, essentially, "nonetheless, the point still stands."
Now I suppose it isn't one big thing precisely, but a whole mess of small obviously wrong things that The Discourse agrees are True.
I'm not saying I'm right about everything and if people disagree then the world has gone mad. Just that there are moments when elite opinion coalesces around nonsense (crime surge!) and no amount of furious blogging can combat it.
Increasingly I realize this is because a lot of people do pretend to believe things they don't, and pretend not to know things they do know, because for various reasons it's easier that way. That boat isn't going to repair itself.
I don't have grand delusions about being The Last Trutheller or nonsense like that, but I don't have to keep The Boss happy, and don't even do anything resembling "networking" anymore. I used to hobnob in DC a bit but it's been a long long time.
