A risk you run when you write a book calling journalists BS vendors is that all your reviewers will be BS vendors. - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

We unwittingly amplify commonalities with friends, dissimilarities with strangers, and contrasts with enemies.

One cannot assert authority by accepting one's own fallibility. Simply, people need to be blinded by knowledge - we are made to follow leaders who can gather people together because the advantages of being in groups trump the disadvantages of being alone. It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent from a social pathology: psychopaths rally followers.

Crying in public because you saw atrocities and feel sorry for someone else is fine; crying in public because you feel sorry for yourself (& implore others to feel sorry for you) is the greatest marker of weakeness.