It's good to have caution, especially in the light of how we've been burned in the past, old friend. But I think you're letting anger accelerate your caution to an unreasonable degree, which escalates from reasonable caution to outright paranoia. We have to reach out to the public and make accurate information about us available to the public. If we want to be trusted, then we have to be willing to reach out and give some of that trust in return.

Treating every Non we ever meet, or every member of the mental health profession we ever meet, as enemies before they give us good reason to is only embracing the same type of attitude that has been used against us. We have to be willing to rise above that ourselves, or we can't expect anyone from outside our community to do the same.

We are never going to achieve trust, understanding, or emancipation from the hatred leveled at us without the support from a significant minority of the Nons. We are never going to achieve it by demanding it ourselves, all by ourselves, because no other minority group in the past has ever done so, and we are never going to have that type of political strength on our own. We need to dispense from that vanguardist type of mentality, or we will continue to sabotage our own progress.

I think some MHPs, such as Tromovitch, Rind, Bailey, and Green, have proven their trustworthiness to this community. Please don't let your anger blind you. The more we refuse to engage the public, the more we act in collusion with the forces that want our voice, and accurate information about us, to never be heard. Doing this unwittingly is just as bad as doing it on purpose. We need to stop treating everyone who is not themselves a MAP as "the enemy."