Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Humans have always been great at drawing conclusions. Sometimes those conclusions are genius, sometimes they’re catastrophic, and sometimes they’re just so stupid you wonder if evolution made a wrong turn somewhere.
Take the period after the Civil War. Doctors—brilliant men with degrees and top hats—finally realized that maybe, just maybe, jamming unwashed hands into open wounds wasn’t the best medical practice. Shocking discovery: germs exist! Soap exists! Fewer dead soldiers! It was a lightbulb moment, and humanity has generally benefited ever since.
Then came the 1970s, when cars had more chrome than sense, and America learned the magical truth of the seatbelt. Strap yourself in and—voilà—you’re far less likely to launch through a windshield like a crash-test projectile. Of course, plenty of rugged individualists screamed about “freedom” and how buckling up was tyranny. They wanted the liberty to eat their steering wheel at 60 miles per hour, and by God, they fought for it. Still, common sense eventually won, and today most people buckle up without thinking twice.
But not all conclusions have been so straightforward. The tobacco lobby, for example, spent decades assuring us that cigarettes were not only safe, but downright glamorous. Doctors lit up in ads. Movie stars puffed away like chimneys. It wasn’t until decades of cancer-filled coffins piled up that the truth became undeniable: smoking kills. Who could’ve guessed that inhaling burning tar and nicotine 20 times a day wasn’t a recipe for health and vitality?
Which brings us to today’s carnival of stupidity. Somewhere along the line, a group of self-proclaimed experts decided that Tylenol causes autism. Don’t ask how they connected those dots—maybe they spilled a bottle of pills on a Rorschach test—but the conclusion stuck in some circles. No studies. No evidence. Just pure, unfiltered nuttery, repackaged as “truth.” It’s the kind of conclusion that makes you wonder if someone spiked the national water supply with discount conspiracy juice.
And yet, here’s the kicker: while we can make up fairy tales about Tylenol and autism, while we can cling to fantasies about cigarettes being harmless and seatbelts being optional, we still somehow can’t draw a straight line from guns to school shootings. Thousands of kids dead or traumatized, entire communities shattered, classrooms turned into crime scenes—and the official conclusion? “Thoughts and prayers.” It’s as if the logic wiring in our collective brain short-circuits the second firearms are involved. Guns don’t kill people, after all, except for the tiny inconvenient fact that they absolutely do, and regularly, in schools, churches, grocery stores, and pretty much anywhere people gather.
So yes, humans love drawing conclusions. Sometimes we get soap. Sometimes we get seatbelts. Sometimes we get decades of cigarette commercials starring the Marlboro Man hacking up a lung. And sometimes we get conspiracy theories about Tylenol. But the real tragedy? We still live in a country that will trace imaginary lines from aspirin to autism but can’t follow the bloody, neon-lit trail from guns to school shootings. If there’s a conclusion to be drawn, it’s this: we’re not short on brains—we’re short on using them.










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