Integrity Over Optics

Guest Opinion by Alicia Boothe Haggermaker

There’s a curious thing that happens whenever someone challenges a system instead of a person.

The response rarely engages the substance of the critique. Instead, attention shifts—quickly and predictably—to the messenger. Motives are questioned. Tone is policed. Labels are assigned. Anything but addressing the underlying issue.

I know this pattern well because I’ve lived inside it. But I’ve also watched it play out repeatedly with others — doctors, researchers, community advocates, and professionals who aren’t afraid to ask uncomfortable questions. When inquiry threatens convenience, status, or institutional cover, the conversation shifts away from what’s wrong and toward who’s asking.

And when someone points this out, the response isn’t, “Is the problem real?”

It’s almost always, “Who does she think she is?”

(A question with a long cultural history — Ray Davies asked it years ago.)

👉 Who Do You Think You Are – Ray Davies

That’s not debate.

That’s deflection.

Here’s what often gets lost in the noise: I don’t have a blanket hatred for any profession, institution, or label. I’ve worked with doctors. I’ve defended nurses, EMS, and firefighters as underpaid, undervalued, and structurally unsupported — because they are. I’ve pointed out that nurses regularly prevent fatal medical errors long before anyone else notices, and that stripping them of professional classification isn’t just insulting, it’s dangerous.

What I won’t tolerate — in any field — is abuse of position.

Titles don’t exempt conduct from scrutiny. Authority doesn’t cancel accountability. And questioning how power is used isn’t an attack on the role itself — it’s a defense of integrity within it.

During COVID, for example, I criticized decision-making that shut down inquiry or hid behind authority. At the same time, I worked directly with doctors who were willing to ask harder questions. That isn’t hypocrisy. It’s consistency. I’m not anti-profession. I’m anti-misuse of power.

This is where optics-first thinking takes over.

Optics-first thinking asks, How does this make me look?

Integrity-first thinking asks, Is this actually right?

When systems feel implicated by a critique but don’t want to engage it, they redirect attention toward the person raising it. Motive is scrutinized. Tone is dissected. Credibility is attacked by proxy. Social psychologist Irving Janis identified this behavior decades ago as groupthink — the tendency of cohesive groups to suppress dissent in order to preserve consensus and avoid discomfort.

👉 Irving Janis and the Theory of Groupthink

Consensus feels safer than correction — until it isn’t.

If people are raising concerns — and those concerns are backed by doctors, researchers, and lived evidence — then ignoring them isn’t the sane response. Especially when the warning is that the problem will escalate without action.

When you notice a spot on your arm that isn’t normal, you don’t slap a Band-Aid on it and go about your day. You ask a doctor to examine it. You test it. You take action to heal it.

Because pretending MRSA is a surface issue doesn’t make it one. Covering it up while continuing as normal doesn’t prevent harm — it guarantees it.

The human body is an ecosystem. Symptoms are signals. Medicine already understands this. We know that preventable harm is often systemic rather than individual — a reality documented in the Institute of Medicine’s landmark report To Err Is Human.

👉 Institute of Medicine – To Err Is Human

(For the record: “ignore it and hope for the best” is not a recognized medical protocol, despite how often it’s applied to public policy.)

Our communities — and our country — function the same way.

Right now, we don’t just rely on Band-Aids. We do something worse. When a problem signals inconvenience or threatens existing power structures, we don’t investigate it — we tourniquet the entire limb. We shut down inquiry. We suppress discussion. We freeze systems in place out of fear instead of diagnosing, treating, and integrating.

That response isn’t healing.

It’s panic management.

And panic management doesn’t prevent collapse — it delays it while increasing the damage.

There’s another pattern worth naming — one we rarely examine honestly.

At a certain point, the people repeatedly labeled “crazy” or “conspiracy theorists” are often the same ones whose concerns show up later as headline news — sometimes months, sometimes years in advance. Not once, not twice, but across a wide range of issues that initially seem unrelated.

That doesn’t make anyone infallible. Nobody is right about everything — and that isn’t a moral failing, it’s a physical reality. Every person lacks context somewhere, carries blind spots, and views the world through the filter of personal experience. The difference isn’t perfection; it’s self-evaluation.

Some people treat their own thinking as a checkpoint — regularly asking what they might be missing, what has changed, and whether new information requires adjustment. Others don’t. And that difference matters.

Pattern recognition isn’t about being “right.” It’s about noticing signals early, while they’re still ambiguous, uncomfortable, and easy to dismiss. It’s about asking questions before consensus forms — not because consensus is wrong, but because it arrives late by design.

Life doesn’t wait for us to be ready. Conditions shift on a dime. New data emerges. Circumstances evolve. When that happens, flexibility isn’t weakness — it’s competence. What often gets mislabeled as “wishy-washy” is sometimes just someone responding honestly to reality as it changes.

Consistency isn’t refusing to adapt.

Consistency is knowing where you’re headed — and returning there even if the route changes.

Side roads don’t negate direction.

They give you the scenic route and often help you gain more context.

History is full of thinkers who were dismissed in their time not because they were wrong, but because they were early — and because early insight is uncomfortable in systems that prefer certainty over curiosity. When warnings repeat, when predictions materialize, and when the same voices keep noticing fractures long before they’re acknowledged, the sane response isn’t ridicule or suppression.

It’s discernment.

Listening doesn’t mean blind agreement. It means taking signal seriously enough to examine it.

Healthy systems don’t punish early warning. They depend on it.

Whether it’s a body, a community, or a country, stability isn’t maintained by suppressing symptoms or policing who’s allowed to notice them. It’s maintained by the willingness to examine what’s wrong before it becomes catastrophic.

When authority responds to concern with deflection, to inquiry with accusation, or to discomfort with control, it isn’t preserving order — it’s accelerating breakdown. Band-Aids and tourniquets are not solutions. They are signs of fear masquerading as leadership.

Integrity doesn’t demand perfection. It demands honesty, proportional response, and the humility to accept that warning signals exist for a reason.

The question isn’t who raised the concern, how inconvenient it is, or whether it disrupts appearances.

The question is simple — and it always has been:

Is the problem real?

If it is, then ignoring it isn’t stability.

It’s negligence dressed up as calm.

Alicia Boothe Haggermaker is a lifelong resident of Huntsville, Alabama, and a dedicated advocate for health freedom. For more than a decade, she has worked to educate the public and policymakers on issues of medical choice and public transparency. In January 2020, she organized a delegation of physicians and health freedom advocates to Montgomery, contributing to the initial draft of legislation that became SB267.

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Sources

1. https://youtu.be/rIOltZ-2hXE

2. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/groupthink

3. https://www.nationalacademies.org/projects/HMD-HCS-18-P-114