Posted on 06/04/2021 4:15:29 AM PDT by Kaslin
As even many casual observers of America's fractious politics are aware, the overwhelming majority of lawmaking at the federal level no longer takes place in Congress as the Constitution's framers intended. Instead, the vast majority of the "rulemaking" governing Americans' day-to-day lives now takes place behind closed doors, deep in the bowels of the administrative state's sprawling bureaucracy. The brainchild of progressive President Woodrow Wilson, arguments on behalf of the modern administrative state are ultimately rooted in, among other factors, a disdain for the messy give-and-take of republican politics and an epistemological preference for rule by enlightened clerisy.
Put more simply, the most straightforward version of the argument offered by partisans of the administrative state amounts to, "Trust the experts." And over the century-plus since Wilson's presidency, the "trust the experts" leitmotif has moved well beyond the realm of prevailing dogma for mandarins in such agencies as the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. Rather, for large swaths of the citizenry and the elected official class, "trust the experts" now reigns supreme for everything from the military ("Trust the generals!") to public health ("Trust the epidemiologists!").
And therein lies the rub.
The trials and tribulations of COVID-19 in America have dealt an irreparable blow to the credibility of America's ruling class and the ruling class's implicit appeal to its authority as a coterie of highly trained and capable experts. No single person exemplifies this more than Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has attained celebrity status during the pandemic as the nation's leading immunologist and forward-facing spokesman for our public policy response. As Steve Deace and Todd Erzen detail in their new book, "Faucian Bargain: The Most Powerful and Dangerous Bureaucrat in American History," Fauci has repeatedly contradicted himself throughout the pandemic, waffling on what the "science" demands at any given moment while still always seeming to err on the side of draconian overreaction.
Recent Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, requests by BuzzFeed and The Washington Post only underscore the point. Perhaps most damningly, the FOIA requests revealed a February 2020 email to former Obama-era Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell explaining that store-bought face masks are "really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection." He also added that the "typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material."
Of course, barely over a month after Fauci's unearthed email to Burwell, Americans were required to wear masks pretty much every time they left their house -- and mask-skeptical posts were censored or deleted by the ruling class's preferred private-sector enforcement arm, Big Tech. And none of this is to even broach the separate issue of the extensive COVID-19-era societal lockdowns, which were never justified on the scientific metrics despite being ubiquitously promoted by those excoriating lockdown-skeptical conservatives to just shut up and "trust the science."
In addition to the Fauci FOIA cache, there is also the Democratic Party and the media's inexplicable 180-degree turn on the plausibility of the Wuhan lab leak theory -- that is, the idea that the COVID-19 pandemic has as its origins not a zoonotic transmission at a local "wet market" but an escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was conducting dangerous coronavirus research (partially subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer) and happens to be located within the immediate vicinity of the then-novel virus's first confirmed cases. The lab leak theory was always plausible, if not probable, but those who promoted it as a possibility from the onset -- such as Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and then-President Donald Trump -- were routinely lambasted as Sinophobic conspiracy theorists.
There was never any compelling reason to dismiss the lab leak theory out of hand, and in retrospect, it seems that those who did so were likely motivated more by "orange man bad!"-style anti-Trump personal animus than anything else. The Biden administration has recently called for a 90-day intelligence community review into the origins of the pandemic, which is welcome news for those of us who have called COVID-19 a "Chinese Chernobyl" demanding serious geopolitical accountability since day one -- but sad news for those who may have presumed a modicum of intellectual honesty from our political elites.
American politics is currently in the throes of a populist moment. That populist moment is characterized by widespread distrust of elites and a perceived ever-widening chasm between the ruling class's prerogatives and the wishes of the American people at large. As we finally begin to emerge from COVID-19, that chasm will only grow wider. The ruling class has finally sullied itself one time too many.
Forever? Das a long time.
Baloney. On the whole, nobody cares.
Democrats will never learn.
A lot of people are rushing out to get the experimental jab that the “experts” say is pretty much mandatory.
Of course, a lot of us are avoiding that whole thing.
But something like 60% of Americans trust the experts enough to take the jab. I find that very depressing. I’m expecting a population crash because I think the vaccine is worse than COVID. Too much trust in experts.
Didn’t have a lot to start with.
This plague (and the so-called election) just proved how right I’ve been despite being called a “defeatist” and “doom and gloomer” here at FR.
A (continued) population cleansing in Rat cities and states will be most welcome. Only concern is that it might take another 5-10 years to play out and it’s doubtful America has that much time left on the clock.
Not a chance. Even after the climate change consensus, I keep hearing calls for science and evidence.
Science is the interpretation of evidence. Excluding and massaging evidence. Think of them more as lawyers than anything else. For grant money, they will prove whatever you want them to.
Firearm sales, people fleeing blue states, decline in Propaganda Media viewership, etc. all point to a lot who care.
“The Biden administration has recently called for a 90-day intelligence community review into the origins of the pandemic, which is welcome news for those of us who have called COVID-19 a “Chinese Chernobyl”“
Anyway ...you were saying something about our faith in ruling experts being destroyed? So F-Troop and the CIA are gonna government-splain what happened?
They were not experts on keeping us safe
They never talked to us about a cure. That’s all anyone needs to know. They had different motives than bio weapons containment
They talked down a cure whe pres Trump talked it up
There’s no loss in trust in experts here.
I doubt those trusted “ruling class experts” much in the first place.
Anyone who trusts the Government is an IDIOT!!!!
Not true.
It has destroyed my faith in many, many of the governmental agencies and the scientific and medical profession.
Sorry
Destroyed my trust in government and big medicine. Actually, I didn’t have must trust in either one before the virus!
I just pray that this country doesn't get into a shooting war with this crowd in charge because the USA will lose. Midnight basketball anyone?
All IMHO of course.
For me, the vietnam war did it. That’s why I didn’t trust them regarding covid 19. And everything I believed at the beginning is turning out to be true, and becoming the current “news”.
I don’t watch TV and get my news from various internet sources. From day one ALL of my believes that I established within two months of this becoming a story stood the test of time, while those that followed what they were being told by the MSM and PSA’s turned out to be duped.
We all eventually learn that they can’t be trusted and we need to learn for ourselves. With my generation it was Vietnam. There have been other examples ever since. For this generation it was the virus.
And yes, the change is “forever”.
You got it, because the idiot that currently resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave is one.
However, at least Hamilton was a loyal patriot, a faithful deputy to George Washington, a fearless leader who led the attack on two British redoubts that sealed the victory at Yorktown, and also managed to stabilize the American currency and make it a viable exchange.
Today's "elitists" are a bunch of inbred retards.
“Baloney. On the whole, nobody cares.”
You’re wrong about that.
As an ex NJ citizen of some 50+ years I have many friends and acquaintances. We speak often enough and exchange emails and although anecdotal I can say there is a universal feeling of being let down and used by the Government with this be especially true among those on the Left.
I can’t say what they will do or not do in the future should another “crises” like this materialize but it is pretty clear from their reactions to the news now emerging they they angry and feel used by what they believe now are political motives for the many inconveniences they had to suffer.
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