Pontificate

Wow.  Dictionary day again and my finger fell on the word “pontificate”.  Its meaning included “pretend to infallibility, be pompously dogmatic.”  The Cambridge dictionary said, “to speak or write and give your opinion about something as if you knew everything about it and as if only your opinion was correct:”
That to me is just scary.  I find it stressful when someone acts like they are always right and will not take on board the opinion of another.  Not that I have any difficulty with a person making hard and sometimes unpopular decisions.  I tend to admire that.
But I do draw the line at the delusional.  Sort of how I see pontificate as it means above.  Both to pretend to infallibility and being pompously dogmatic are to me signs of a closed system.  Something that won’t hear of any opinion but their own and builds defences to counteract all – including reason.  Reminds me of the Simon and Garfunkel song “Bridge over troubled Waters”, “All lies and jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”
The word itself is derived from a system that denied the common man access to what was stated and claimed infallibility.  It therefore justified all sorts of money-making actions that were never said in the first place.
I personally have a thing about promoting false hope for personal gain.  It is not something confined only to the dark ages.  Even today empires are being built that make one rich and leave the giver perhaps feeling a little better about themselves but no different (except perhaps poorer).
It is why I am really careful about what I adhere to and align myself with.  To me it matters what empire I contribute to.  I ask myself, “which is worse, to fall or to cause someone to fall?”  In my mind both are accountable, but I sure do not want to be one who causes another to go off track.  Peddling false hope is to me a crime against humanity.
I adhere to a certain worldview – not blindly but with my eyes wide open.  Either the founder was a lunatic, a liar or who he said he was.  As much as I can I have reached a conclusion based on all the facts I know.  I also rest assured that if my conclusion could have been proved wrong it would have long ago, as greater minds than I have given it a go.
So to me to pontificate is fraught.  Often it is easy to see through a fraud but not always.  But to me there are always means to establish what is true and what is a lie.