Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
For years, European policy makers had assured the world that the relatively rapid “transition” to “green” energy was the world’s preordained future—regardless of the costs.
Accordingly, many European Union governments followed the advice of green experts. They eagerly shut down coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants to transition immediately to “renewable energy.”
Most citizens were afraid to object that in cloudy, cold Germany solar panels were not viable methods of electrical generation—especially in comparison to the country’s vast coal deposits and its large, model nuclear power industry.
As a result, German government officials warn that this winter, in 19th-century fashion, families will have to burn wood—the dirtiest of modern fuels—to endure the cold. And there is further talk of “warm rooms,” where like pre-civilizational tribal people, the elderly will bunch together within a designated heated room to keep alive.
Sri Lanka may be the first modern nation to adopt deliberate policies that have led to mass hunger and bankruptcy. The government for a variety of reasons listened to foreign advocates of back-to-nature organic farming, specifically outright abandonment of highly effective synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.
The result was endemic crop failure. Cash crops for export failed. Widespread hunger followed. Without foreign exchange, it became impossible to import key staples like food and fuel.
Sri Lanka once had a per capita income twice that of nearby India. Now it cannot feed or fuel itself.
Unfortunately, its incompetent government trusted radical environmental advisors, many of them foreign experts. Sri Lanka believed it could become the woke darling of the “Environmental, Social, Governance” movement, and that way draw in unlimited Western woke investment.
Instead, it has embraced a policy of national suicide.
Recently, a group of 55 distinguished pro-administration economists assured us that Joe Biden’s massive borrowing and new entitlements agenda were not inflationary. In September 2021, these economists with 14 Nobel prize winners among them declared that Biden’s inflationary policies would actually “ease” inflation.
Last month, inflation spiked to an annualized rate of 9.1 percent. None of these “blue-chip” economists have offered any apologies for lending their prestige to convince Americans of the absurd: that inflating the money supply, spiking new government spending, incentivizing labor non-participation, and keeping interest rates artificially low would not cause inflation.
In late July 2021, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, claimed that the Taliban takeover “was not a foregone conclusion.” He bragged that 34 provincial capitals were still in Afghan government hands.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin nodded in approval. Less than a month later, the entire Afghan government collapsed. The American military fled in its most ignominious retreat in over 50 years. Milley had been parroting Biden’s earlier prompt that a Taliban victory after the American evacuation was “highly unlikely.”
On the eve of the 2020 election, news accounts revealed some of the lurid contents on Hunter Biden’s lost laptop. Emails and photos began to incriminate the entire Biden family for leveraging millions of dollars from foreign grandees for access to a bought Joe Biden.
Fifty retired intelligence officers, however, without evidence, swore that the laptop’s appearance could be due to “Russian disinformation.” Yet after authentication—Hunter himself never denied the lost laptop was his—few if any of those marquee “experts” apologized for their election-driven dissimulation.
At the height of the massive 2020 enforced quarantine and lockdowns, some 1,200 medical and health “professionals” signed a petition claiming that thousands of left-wing protestors should be exempt from the very quarantine they had insisted on for others. The experts absurdly claimed that denying tens of thousands the right to break quarantines to protest in the street was a greater health threat than COVID-19.
FBI Director James Comey doggedly pursued the “Russian collusion” hoax. At one point he hired the discredited Christopher Steele to supply the FBI with information from his fantasy dossier. Once called to account, on some 245 occasions before Congress, Comey swore that he could either not remember or had no knowledge about the questions asked of him.
His successor FBI interim Director Andrew McCabe admittedly lied on four occasions to federal officials. Special counsel and former FBI director Robert Mueller himself swore under oath that he knew nothing either about the Steele dossier or Fusion GPS—the twin catalysts for his entire investigation.
FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith admitted to altering a federal court document in efforts to convict an innocent suspect.
All these depressing examples have one common denominator. Elite experts and degreed professionals massaged and warped their knowledge to serve ideological masters rather than the truth.
In the process, they caused untold damage to their country and fellow citizens. They disgraced their profession. They tarnished the scientific community. And sold their souls to ideologues.
Is it any wonder why the Western public has lost confidence in their degreed and credentialed elites?
True but hardly new.
Please see Psalm 146:3
VDH excepted.
Ah, the 4th turning. Average folk like us will go through hardship. Warm rooms? People crowded/huddling together to stay warm? That might be the best thing to happen to humanity in 50 years. TV off, phones off, laptops off. Maybe we will relearn to talk to one another.
We will come out the other side more in touch with one another. Valuing our fellow humans. At least for another 3 or 4 generations when it will happen again.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a target-rich environment for why so many of us have lost trust in the “experts.” Governments’ responses to the pandemic were policies from alleged experts that completely contradicted all prior good science.
Masks: there are countless peer-reviewed studies and randomized control trials going back to the Spanish Flu Pandemic which have all shown masks are completely ineffective against influenza-like infections. Yet we are still forced to wear them in some places.
Lockdowns: there had never been a pandemic response plan that quarantined the healthy. Such plans always involved protecting the vulnerable and quarantining the sick. Yet many countries imposed onerous lockdowns that caused severe economic, medical, educational, and mental harm with no corresponding decrease in the number of infections or deaths from COVID.
Vaccines: While the vaccines did have good efficacy in preventing severe cases–at least early-on, COVID has animal reservoirs and the COVID vaccines do not produce the kind of immunity that polio or smallpox vaccines do. There was never any way that they would stop the COVID virus like measles or pertussis are stopped. Yet many people have been either required to get experimental vaccines or forced to quit their jobs.
“Science” is no longer about questions that don’t have answers. It is now about answers that can’t be questioned. We have Tony Fauci, Deborah Birx, Robert Redfield, Neil Ferguson, and countless other experts to thank.
VDH’s piece reminds me of the old comical definition of an expert: One who learns more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing.
I have always gone with Winston Churchill’s definition of an expert: there is no such thing, only varying degrees of ignorance .
You may notice VDH speaks of the Expert Class as a subset of the set of all experts, in the same sense that witch doctors are a subset of the set of all doctors.
The ‘Expert Class’ are not the experts. The actual experts, if they do not support the narrative, were and are disparaged, ignored, ridiculed, and ruined by the State and the ‘Official’ media.
It is important to distinguish between the two. The ‘Expert Class’ supports a narrative – they could be compared to consultants who walk into a room, determine who’s writing the check, and issue a report that confirms what the contractor wants; the actual experts deal in facts and science objectively. If the actual experts do not agree with the preordained and desired result they leave, not enriched, without a positive referral, and possibly without a career.
It becomes easier to understand if you consider the events occurring during the current generation as a plan with the intent of disrupting and destroying society and to induce division and conflict with the objective of exercising power over the ignorant, of which there are, unfortunately, many.
Just when one controversy subsides there is something else to cause distress and anxiety.
The FBI is beyond redemption and must be dismantled, starting with the very glib and smug Christopher Wray. The FBI acts with impunity because it sees itself as absolutely indispensable. FISA surveillance is presented in the same vein. As something we cannot do without, despite the continuous abuse of this domestic spying by cynical FBI and DOJ criminals. We have an inspector general who is paid to ensure that abuses are noted and prosecuted. We need someone like John Ratcliffe in charge of that function. The deep state also extends to judges and juries in fortress D.C. Our nation cannot and must not acquiesce to this unelected shadow government. We must return to some semblance of a balance of power in the seat of government and beyond.
Why have I lost faith in “Science”? It is because WHO, NIH, etc. no longer follow it. They have become prostitutes, as such.
On another point, I had asked a doctor of mine if she was familiar with the “Great Barrington Declaration”. To my surprise, she was not. She said she would read it, though (it is only about a page in length). The next time I saw her, I again asked her about it. She said she had read it. I asked what she thought of it. Her response was, “No comment”.
This just shows me how politically correct even medicine has become. One dare not step out of line by sharing their personal thoughts or else it might be damaging to their career.
Things must change. They half to.
I’m fortunate to have a PCP who is not politically correct. My first visit in 2020 she said the vax will get us out of all the lockdowns and masking. On my semi annual checkup in 2021, after I drove around the USA 4x (2x in 2020 and 2X in 2021 unjabbed and rarely masked), I had a checkup where the mask was required to get in. Once we were in the exam room I noticed she had her mask down below her chin. Upon asking her about it she said it was all political now. She got jabbed to keep her job but has not gotten boosted since.
She was not fully sold on how to deal with COVID but knew the mask and jab was not going to solve the issue.
I never got jabbed and rarely wear a mask (only VA visits now). COVID did not stop me from my RV trips around the USA but Joe Biden did this year. Gas prices put a crimp in my travels.
An “expert” is someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know absolutely everything about nothing.
I think the thing that upsets me the most is how rapidly people were willing to conform to the “new normal” based upon “expert advice”. From throwing the 1st Amendment under the bus to reporting your neighbor having a birthday party for their 6-year old in a locked-down backyard, many were quick to surrender their God given or hard won freedoms.
For those that pushed back, it often meant castigation, jail time or social alienation. Honestly though, the final straw was President Biden labeling half the country “domestic terrorists” because they disagreed with him. This took Obama’s “you didn’t build that” comment to a whole new level.
There is no coming back from that degree of contempt towards one’s constituents.
Nevermore will I trust the government or its appointed (or anointed) experts.