The Daily Fulton
Date: July 1, 2022
Headline: “Who Benefits? A Call for Critical Thinking”

From the archives. Contributor: Spence Hutchins, Curator of the Fulton Hills Historical Society. Republished with written permission from C.W.H.

Dear readers, let us set aside, for a moment, the banter and the back-and-forth that have colored recent discussions of the Dun Maylock. Let us cease pointing fingers at specific incidents, analyzing bloody handprints, and debating whether the librarian rearranged her books for publicity or was some group behind the action with some greater purpose in mind.

These details, while intriguing, are distractions from the larger, far more important truth: there is a pattern, and it demands your attention.

Critical thinking is not an act of convenience. It is a skill, an obligation, and, in these troubled times, a necessity. We are too quick, it seems, to dismiss what we cannot immediately explain. Too eager to reduce complexity to coincidence, as though that absolves us of the responsibility to ask deeper questions.

Today, I implore you to put aside the skepticism that clouds clarity and instead apply your reason. Step back, observe the patterns, and ask the question that matters most: Who benefits?

Patterns Demand Examination

A single handprint on a door might be a prank. A cryptic note might be a coincidence. But what about the consistency? The recurrence of events across decades, even centuries? What about the subtle throughlines that tie seemingly isolated incidents together – the targeting of powerful individuals, the spread of fear, the careful orchestration of chaos – sometimes timed as distraction?

We can argue endlessly about individual events and their merit as “evidence.” You can easily reduce many an anomaly to drunken farmhands and overactive imaginations. But this piecemeal approach ignores the larger truth: when viewed collectively, the incidents attributed to the Dun Maylock form a cohesive narrative, one that is too deliberate to dismiss outright.

The Plan Beneath the Chaos

If we accept, for a moment, that there is orchestration behind these events, then the question arises: why? What purpose does it serve to frighten, disrupt, or eliminate? The answer lies not in the acts themselves, but in their consequences.

Consider this: every act attributed to the Dun Maylock destabilizes. It sows fear. It undermines trust. Whether it’s a farmer questioning his neighbor, a librarian reeling from public scrutiny, or a wealthy landowner suddenly toppled, the end result is the same: division. Chaos. Power vacuums.

Who benefits from this? Is it a group with a clear agenda—political, financial, or ideological? Or is it something more abstract? The maintenance of control through fear? The consolidation of influence by keeping others off-balance? These are the questions we must ask.

The Danger of Dismissal

The refusal to engage with these patterns—to chalk them up to coincidence or laziness—is not skepticism. It is negligence. And negligence is the seedbed of evil. By failing to look deeper, we allow those orchestrating this chaos to act with impunity.

Dismissing the Dun Maylock as a myth does not erase the consequences of their attributed actions. It does not explain away the fear left in their wake. Nor does it answer the most pressing question of all: if they do not exist, then who does?

Who is arranging the pieces? Who gains when others lose? Who profits from fear, mistrust, and disorder?

A Call to Reason

This is not a plea to embrace conspiracy or to see the Dun Maylock in every shadow. It is a call to think critically, to observe the patterns, and to follow the threads where they lead. Ask questions.

Above all, it is a call to resist complacency.

Ask yourself, as you read these words: Who benefits? Who benefits when a landowner falls from grace, when a community is consumed by fear, when power shifts from one hand to another? The answers are there, if only we have the courage to seek them.

The truth may be uncomfortable. It may challenge long-held assumptions or require difficult choices. But it is only through the pursuit of truth—undaunted and unrelenting—that we can hope to understand what is truly at work in our town, in our time.

C.W.H.
Seeker of Truth, Bearer of Light