you see a lot of stuff on the tweets about so-and-so being "wrong" about what are essentially matters of opinion that can't be second-guessed because alternate history, to paraphrase EH Carr, is a time-wasting parlor game, however interesting it might be

in other words, what happens occurs because those in a position to make it happen do it, either athwart or alongside the opinions of those who care about whatever "it" is. as for me, if you see me advocating a position, it's because i will derive some benefit from it

"I" here encompasses the group of people I'm concerned about - family, friends, the local community, the larger community, etc. in decreasing degree of propinquity and thus decreasing importance/ability to act upon. others may mystify this, and claim to speak for mankind. i don't

in other words, if i am arguing for something, it will benefit me in exactly the sense described above. you may have different objectives. if so, we will likely not agree on that issue, which means we can either never speak again (the social media way) or move on [dot org]

of course, due to incomplete information and limited time, i may argue for a course of action that leads to failure, but there's only so much i can do given that i don't have the leisure to "do the work" of tweeting 100x a day like some of the "Kids" who are "Here for It."