They make the person telling the truth look foolish, make him seem like a crank, a troublemaker, somebody who thinks too much of himself, so that when he says the dangerous thing, no one is inclined to believe him.

It is a very effective weapon, mockery, because it costs them nothing and it does half their work for them.

By the time Julian had proof, half the town had already been taught to see him as a joke, and that is exactly how the powerful like it.

A truth-teller who has already been laughed at is a truth-teller who has already been half silenced.” He looked up at me, and the shame in his eyes had deepened into something closer to grief.

“And then he started actually finding things.