Hutch wrote:Returning to the Topic (never in the course of human events have so many topics changed subjects so often in so short a time as this place... ), here is one where the person actually admits he's been stupid...
Shadow of Freedom,as Stephen Westman reflects:The real problem, he admitted to himself, was that he had been played like a fiddle by “Firebrand,” the Mesan agent provocateur who’d offered to provide his own resistance effort with weapons for his campaign to prevent Montana from becoming part of the Star Empire of Manticore. He’d done some stupid things in his life, but right off hand, he couldn’t think of any which had been stupider than that one. For one thing, he’d been wrong about the Manties. For that matter, he’d even been wrong about Bernardus Van Dort, and that had been a really unpleasant pill to swallow. But what he found even harder to forgive himself for was accepting Firebrand at face value. When he’d discovered he’d actually been working with something as foul as Manpower, Incorporated…
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As noted elsewhere, stupidity born of ignorance can be cured. Westman shows that he can learn and is therefore trainable (and curable)
-- Stewart