The Experiment:
Our society has been taking part in an experiment that started decades ago, but has picked up quite a lot of steam in recent years. Some combination of COVID and Trump has sent this experiment into hyperdrive. It is based on a relatively simple premise.
The Premise: Because no individual can possibly be educated to expert levels on all subjects, society would be improved if it named highly educated experts on individual subjects to make decisions rather than allowing the uneducated masses to make their own decisions. This change would benefit both citizens and society because it would eliminate people making decisions that harm themselves or others through ignorance, stubbornness, and stupidity. Instead, all citizens would get the benefit of having each decision in their lives made by experts in any particular field.
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At first blush, it doesn’t sound like such a bad idea. The more libertarian parts of us might bristle at the idea of losing “freedom” or “choice” or other quaint Rockwellian illusions… but aren’t those just anachronistic sentimentalities held over from a simpler time when people didn’t have access to the kind of information our modern society possesses? “Choice” seems like a nice concept when two roads diverge in a yellow wood to take the traveler to an unknown and unknowable destination, but if we know where the paths lead… and one destination is better than the other, wouldn’t everyone be better off if someone closed one of the paths and removed the incorrect choice?
Obviously, the answer is no. As it turns out, experts, even a consensus of experts, can be wrong and very often are. Sometimes their proclamations are naked manipulation. Sometimes they are simply mistaken. But society is noticing that what was declared as unimpeachable truth yesterday is blatantly false today, and they are noticing it on a regular basis. Society is beginning to reject the pathological idea that they should obey their betters. This is happening for better or worse, and in this article I hope to explore some of why this is happening and illuminate some of the ramifications.
Just to give a little insight into my stance on the issue, remember what happened in Robert Frost’s yellow wood. He took the hard road, the one less traveled by. It made all the difference. In my mind, I like to picture some frowning Karen standing by the easy road and calling the traveler a “science denier” while he happily walks toward his destiny, on the road less traveled.
Let’s Go Brandon!
Here’s a question for you. Do you know why the saying “Let’s go Brandon!” has become so ubiquitous? It’s not just because Joe Biden is unpopular and it’s a fun way for conservatives to say the “F Word” about a sitting President in the open. It’s actually a much deeper phenomenon than that… and much more dangerous to the ruling elite than a little jab at a politician.
“Let’s go Brandon!” arose from a NASCAR interview with some race car reporter lady and some driver named Brandon (I’m not much of a NASCAR enthusiast). The crowd was chanting “F*&K Joe Biden” loudly and clearly. The reporter, either honestly misunderstanding the crowd or simply trying to defuse the awkward situation on live national television stated, “Listen to that crowd! They are saying, let’s go Brandon!”. It was a funny moment and certainly enjoyable for the unwashed masses that love poking liberal politicians and their mouthpieces in the media, but why has it lasted? It was just a little misstatement… and likely unintentional. I mean, who cares, right?
Well, the reason that the meme has stuck is because it perfectly encapsulates the “don’t believe your lyin’ eyes” propaganda from experts that we have all been living with for years. Anyone watching the interview could clearly hear what the crowd was saying. Yet the authority figure, the reporter, told us what we were hearing was in fact not what we were hearing. It wasn’t a spontaneous eruption of vulgarity toward an unpopular politician. No, we were meant to believe it was a simple innocuous cheer for some race car driver.
And therein lies its draw. “Let’s go Brandon!” is much more than a cheeky way of giving the finger to Joe Biden. It’s a cheeky way of giving the finger to the entire propaganda apparatus that constantly tells us to ignore our senses, to forget our own logic, and blindly follow their learned explanations, blatantly false as they may be. “Let’s go Brandon” is a rejection of our betters… and that is why it is so roundly attacked by the media and the elites.
Hilariously, the very same people who spent every spare moment over the last 5 years saying the most vile things possible about the last President, clutch their pearls and succumb to the vapors over this. Why? Because they understand that when Americans say “Let’s go Brandon” they aren’t actually saying “F*&k Joe Biden”. They are actually saying “F*&k you”.
In an earlier time, Francis Scott Key, while negotiating a prisoner exchange on a British ship just off Fort McHenry, immortalized a similar sentiment. After a hellish bombardment of the beleaguered force defending Fort McHenry, Key was told that the fort would soon fall, stymying his negotiations for a favorable prisoner swap. Then the sun began to rise and gave proof through the night, that our flag was still there. No amount of British propaganda could lower that flag… it was still there for all to see. Perhaps in today’s parlance, Key would have looked at those British officers and said, “Let’s go Brandon!”.
How Did We Get To This Point?
What the “Let’s go Brandon!” phenomenon highlights is that huge swaths of American society have lost faith in our institutions. They don’t trust the press. They don’t trust politicians. They don’t trust the education system. They don’t trust the justice system. They don’t trust corporate America. In short, they’ve become cynical about the institutions that gird our society. That’s a bad thing… So how did it happen?
In order to answer that question, we have to understand who, exactly, has lost faith in the institutions. It’s not everyone… and it’s actually not really separated by party as much as it might seem. It’s separated by class. Painting with a huge brush here, the basic situation is that the working class has lost faith in the ruling class, and the ruling class either doesn’t know it or is too arrogant to think it matters.
The loss of this trust was really death by a thousand cuts, with a few giant stab wounds for good measure. Basically, American institutions have been either staggeringly incorrect or simply dishonest about issues large and small for decades. One thing after another, in the face of what expert after expert decreed, without any accountability or even admission of a mistake. Time and time again it happened, and people who brought it up were gaslit in the most obvious and insulting ways. Eventually, many Americans just spit the bit.
Maybe few examples will help illustrate my point:
The Iraq War
Remember weapons of mass destruction? Remember Colin Powell sitting at the UN with his little vial of fake anthrax? Remember George Bush saying “America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”?
All the experts agreed. All the intelligence officials agreed. The Democrats agreed. The Republicans agreed. The British agreed. For God sakes, we spent trillions of dollars. We killed over 300,000 people! We lost thousands of Americans and wounded tens of thousands more. And they were all wrong!!!
Where was the accountability? Where were the hearings on Capitol Hill with the intelligence community bosses who supposedly had all this evidence? Why did everyone keep their jobs? How about the press? They were all on board. There were no changes in the news rooms. No corrections or admissions of being in politicians’ pockets.
Seriously, people should have gone to prison over that debacle. Careers should have been ended. But there was no accountability… not even a little bit. In what seems to be the beginning of a pattern, the powers that be shrugged it off and kept on doing exactly what they did before.
Well the American people began to notice. They weren’t ready to spit the bit yet, but they noticed.
The Global Warming Predictions
Al Gore made a movie. He made predictions. Peak oil, rising sea levels, no more snow on Mount Kilimanjaro, no more ice caps or glaciers, hot polar bears… it wasn’t subtle. He put dates in the movie. He came out with a power point and a scissor lift. Everyone reported it like it was unimpeachable fact.
Unfortunately for Al, none of it has happened. We haven’t hit peak oil, the polar bears are fine, Greenland is still covered in ice, and last I checked Mt. Kilimanjaro is as snow capped as ever.
What did the media elites do? They changed the name of Global Warming to “Climate Change” and claimed to have a complete consensus of all scientists everywhere. They called you a “denier” for bringing up the point that literally nothing they claimed was imminent has ever come to pass.
To this day, the only allowable conversation on environmental issues in the press and among politicians is how awful it all is, how screwed we all are, how it’s all our fault, and how the only way to fix it is to … well they never really get to that part.
Well, the American people noticed that too.
The Deification of Barack Obama
I am actually not a giant Obama hater. I didn’t vote for him and I don’t agree with his politics, but I don’t think he was a secret communist or particularly anti-American. I just think he was arrogant and came to represent of generation of Democrats who I don’t think were very good for the country.
He presided over anemic economic growth out of the Great Recession because he was pretty anti-business. He wasn’t very good on foreign policy, but it’s hard to hit him too hard on that considering his predecessor went to literal war with the wrong country. He was just a bit of a “blame America first” “tax and spend” liberal. We’ve had them before, and we’ll have them again, but it wasn’t the end of the world.
On the flip side, he was handsome, young, vibrant, brilliant, and black. He was America’s first black President… and while the modern left pretends that never happened, I can tell you I am very proud of our country for electing a black man to our highest office. No other majority white country in history has done that. It represents the progress we’ve made.
But to listening to the press, this man could simply do no wrong. His Attorney General was hugely partisan. His “Chicago way” political style was flat out ruthless. He destroyed many people. Yet time after time, the elites would simply ignore serious problems. The IRS scandal would have seen any President before or after him near impeached… and those involved, including Lois Lerner, are defiant to this day. Hell, many of you might not have even heard of the scandal.
Obama also had the FBI bug Trump Tower in the middle of Trump’s run for President. Just what the hell do you think brought Nixon down?
Yet to this day, elites around this country claim that Obama’s only scandal was a tan suit. They call him the “scandaless President”. Gaslights all around and the American people again took notice.
Then We Entered The TRUMP Era
Where to even start with the era of Donald Trump. It began with the elites telling us over and over again that he had no chance of winning. Then when actually beat that corrupt, mean, old white lady who nobody liked, they called everyone “racist” for some reason.
Then they spent years claiming that Trump was a Russian agent or that he colluded with them to become President. They never really did specify exactly how…
Investigation after investigation. A Special Counsel. Adam Schiff on every TV screen he could get on holding a secret envelope with the “proof” of Trump’s horrible misdeeds. They arrested a General and threw him in prison. They dug up every piece of dirt they could find and gleefully reveled in every sordid detail while openly insulting anyone who voted for him.
They took his Supreme Court nominee and found some dingbat to go before congress and tell some obviously false, idiotic story about a party where he allegedly got handsy in 1983(ish)! Then the press went out and found other liars and put them on the air and interviewed with with breathy interest.
As it turns out, it was all completely false! Trump never colluded with Russia. He probably did sleep with Stormy Daniels… so mark that one in their column. His supporters included a huge amount of Obama voters… so they couldn’t have been that racist. And Brett Kavanaugh has never met a single one of his accusers before. Not even one!
I could go on about this enough to fill a thousand pages, but just trust me when I tell you, working class America got the picture loud and clear. The elites of this country didn’t only discount them, they hated them. And Americans started hating the elites back.
COVID Etc…
I have already written enough on this for a short book, but the fact is that just about everything we have been told about this virus was completely false or has been given in mixed messages. Vaccines, masks, virus origins, death rates, hospitalization rates, treatments, BLM protests being okay while seeing your family is not, effects on children, defund the police, crime, schools, small businesses… need I really go on?
The names we have all been called by cloistered millionaires in less than 6 zip codes for doing nothing more than asking a few questions and doing some of our own research is just unforgivable.
Hear me now: We don’t believe you. We don’t like you. Go away.
Bit spit.
So, How Do We Fix This?
First we have to decide that we want to repair what’s been broken. I am not an ANTIFA or Q-Anon radical. I do not want to burn down the institutions that our society has built. We should grieve over what has happened to academia, The New York Times, CNN, and our political representatives. What can be saved should be saved.
Next we have to understand that some of it can’t be saved. There are institutions that simply will not get the message in time. I worry that the Democratic Party might be one of them. Certain Ivy League universities might become irrelevant husks of their former selves. Some of them already have. Let’s hope I’m wrong about the Democratic Party. We need two strong parties in America.
But we will survive the death of some of these institutions. It just means we will have to do the work of building up new institutions… and that is much more difficult than burning down old ones. But it’s the reality and it’s what must be done.
Next we have to support those who are doing it right. Whether it’s Bari Weiss, who left the New York Times to write independently here on Substack, or Glenn Greenwald who left the publication he founded because it spun out of control and turned on him… we have to give our clicks, our dollars, and our attention to those who have earned it. We have to do that even though we might not always agree with what they have to say.
Then we have to trust the market. Every time there is a crisis, cynics explain why the markets that have always driven one industry or another no longer matter. But they do matter. They just aren’t instant. Believe that people who are trustworthy will, in the long run, be trusted. Trust that what is nourishing will, in the long run, be consumed. We need to have a little faith.
Finally and perhaps most importantly, we must never stop saying “Let’s go Brandon!”. Be brave. Speak. Write. Never surrender, until in God’s good time, the Old World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the New.
Sequitur
Just a quick note on telos. Everything has a purpose. Coca-Cola makes soda. Delta Air Lines flies people to destinations. Ford makes cars.
When Coca-Cola loses focus on making soda and instead focuses on something else, no matter how noble that thing is, the result is the destruction of Coca-Cola. The same is true of Delta, Ford, or the ACLU for that matter.
If we want to save our institutions, we must let everything that exists be what it is. If you are a man, be a good man. If you are a woman, be a good woman. If you are gay, be gay or a teacher, be a teacher.
We lose our way when teachers become gay activists or gay activists become teachers. We lose our way when Coca-Cola tries to cure historic racial inequality. Cars drive. If they start to fly, they cease being cars.
As individuals we are complex and complicated. We can be many things. An individual can be a gay activist and a teacher, just not at the same time. If they try, they will do them both poorly.
Non Sequitur
Just to let you know, “woke” is over. It’s like the Harlem Shake. It was everywhere, and in 10 minutes people will make fun of you for thinking it’s still a thing. They’ll replace it with something else, but nobody likes “woke” anymore. I just thought you should know.
‘Bout time…
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Happy New Year!!! God bless all of you and thank you for the support. I am so excited about 2022! I have my black eyed peas soaking and I’ll be making cornbread. So, good luck and gold are in the sights!
I wish you all good fortune and love. We’ve got a lot more coming!
—V
Great article. Keep writing, I’ll keep reading
Spot on! Excellent analysis