I imagine many of those who have remained willingly blind to things coming to a point have relied heavily on the "explaining away" mechanism.
The need to explain away arises when people are faced with a truth that makes them uncomfortable or puts them in a bad light.
People will go to great lengths to avoid acknowledging an uncomfortable truth as truth. They will go to even greater lengths to avoid the responsibility that comes with accepting truth. This is where explaining away happens.
When someone explains away truth, they are essentially minimizing or dismissing the significance of truth. People who adopt this tactic want to convince others that the reality of truth is unimportant and unworthy of consideration, especially when set against the unreality of lies, which is then presented as being of paramount importance.
More than simple declarations, all attempts at explaining away come loaded with reasons. Saying truth is unimportant is not enough - the assertion must be supported with detailed whys and hows.
Explaining away has also been utilized as a powerful weapon of inversion. It starts with relabeling good as bad. This relabeling is immediately followed up by an avalanche of reasons, arguments, and explanations, all of which attest to why good is bad and bad is good.
Explaining away has become the official doctrine of our totalitarian reality. All components of the System have been calibrated to minimize and/or dismiss truth whenever it happens to shine through the lies.
The media dedicates the bulk of its energy to explaining away. Professors and researchers build and devote entire careers to explaining away. Politicians and corporate leaders have forgotten how to do anything other than explain away. Common people nourish themselves almost entirely on steady diets of explaining away.
At its core, explaining away is a form of deception. It is meant to influence. It is meant to manipulate. It is meant to control.
And ultimately, it is meant to lure people toward self-damnation.