It’s very important to pay attention to what your rivals and enemies say about you, more important than what your fellows say about you, because the ideas they have you’re already situated to have yourself.

Now it’s important not to care or feel about what they say, but it’s just as important to know it.

Partly because they do see some truths about you you don’t, just wrapped in a narrative so at odds with yours it can be hard to see through unless you try. And the things they see in you that you’re convinced have no basis in reality, the things you think come from nowhere - well if it doesn’t come from you where does it come from? Them, by definition, right? And their worldview is built out of the things they know, and they know their weaknesses and fears, and if they’re sounding the alarm about some vulnerability you haven’t even poked at…

Well, you know, the feckless liberal thing to do would be to pfaw that that you mean no such thing, it’s a silly lie, and the ambitious, useful thing to do would be to pick out the weaknesses they’re pointing out, the things they claim you do but you don’t, and start doing them.