When Naysayers are Wrong, Part I

Naysayers have been all around us since the beginning of time.  They are often wrong......

Naysayers are part of life.  From the beginning of time and throughout history there were and are to this day naysayers.  The thing about Naysayers is they are sometimes right in their position, sometimes.   But just as often they are wrong.

History tends to sort out the truth and whether or not the Naysayers were right or wrong on a particular topic.  One thing I'll say about naysayers....if the predictions turn out to be right, they have a lot more credibility than if they were/are wrong all the time...

Take, for example, the first explorers who set out to find the new world in the 1400's.  Naysayers of the time said they would fail.  Worse yet, naysayers back then said these early explorers would fall off the end of the earth because "the earth was flat..... "  We all know what happened there.

Closer to home and on a more personal note, there were naysayers in my last election--one of whom in particular predicted I would "lose spectacularly!"  Of course, those naysayers and the one in particular were all absolutely 100% wrong;  I actually won my primary election putting their hand-selected candidate in last place before going on to win my general election race with nearly 70% of the vote over my Democrat opponent. (I actually won with the highest margin of victory of any local Republican candidate on the slate, on a percentage basis,  up against a Democrat opponent in the 2016 General Election).  So yes, those naysayers got that one about as wrong as humanly possible.  What a hoot!

About the same time as the naysayers were predicting, inaccurately, my political demise--one naysayer was also loudly predicting that a highly successful, local economic development initiative that I strongly supported at that time(and still support) was going to fail.  Here is what this naysayer said, verbatim, about the VT MAE (now ST Engineering Aerospace) airport MRO project back in 2016....

"VT MAE is a huge failure.  It is an attempt to capture crumbs off someone elses [SIC] table because we lack the leadership to figure out our own vision for our community.  Has anyone articulated why


 aviation should be one of our primary economi [sic] thrusts?  We are playing "me too" to Mobile's efforts.  Aviation is a high glam, high stakes, high rate of failure. We are wasting our time because we can't see past the first part: High Glamor."

Well, this naysayer was about as wrong as wrong can get on that one....... 

VT MAE (renamed to ST Engineering Aerospace) just opened this year, 2018,  at the Pensacola Airport, they are building up to 400 jobs, and the Triumph Gulf Coast Board just awarded this firm $56 Million to build three more hangars in Pensacola--allowing this firm to add an additional 1300 direct jobs, 3400 indirect jobs, and a $600 Million Impact to the state's GDP yearly!!!

VT MAE has been a huge success and it is only getting bigger and better for Pensacola, Escambia County, and the entire region!

The moral of the story is this.  A dose of cynicism and skepticism is normal, healthy, and beneficial. 

But a strident, arrogant naysayer who begins to develop a track record of being wrong on one issue after another after another after another and another------well watch out for those sorts of naysayers--because odds are they are wrong all over the place and on all kinds of stuff!

NOTE:  Look for follow on posts on this topic over the next few weeks culminating August 28th with my last post on this topic--which I can't wait to write--