https://sahar.substack.com/p/your-enemies-might-be-right-about
If your enemies are attacking you and winning, there’s a good chance it’s because you have a real weakness.
It’s not that they’ll be nice enough to attack your weakness with compassion: they’ll twist truth and be as unscrupulous as they can get away with. It’s not that they’ll only attack you for things you’re actually wrong about: maybe you are weak because you’re correct but unpopular. But it still is a real weakness. Either way — you have a problem.
Even if it’s all horribly unfair — understanding where people don’t trust you, where they don’t like you, where you’re misunderstood, where people are liable to scandalous lies about you — that’s information. Useful information.
When we’re fully enmeshed in a social scene, we keep track of who is important, and who is an annoying barely tolerated crank. We forget that others looking in have neither the context nor desire to make that distinction. The worst members of your team often become its public face: the edgelords, the conspiracists, the assholes, the scolds, the predators, and worse. You know who will make sure to show you when that happens? Even when it hurts your feelings — especially if it hurts your feelings? Enemies. God bless them.