The reason President Trump is in office today is because American voters have been fed up for a long time with the American elite political class. Political, economic, and scientific elites in this country have long looked down their noses at the American people, considering them backwards and benighted. And the American people, for their part, are now returning the disdain. That culminated with the election of Trump, a reactive measure on the part of voters who had had enough of being lied to, mistreated, and condescended to by politicians. But if you thought America’s elite ruling class would learn from Trump’s election, you’d be wrong.
There’s no better example of the tone deafness, condescension, and lack of self awareness of America’s ruling class than recent comments made by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the public face of the US government’s coronavirus response. Fauci stated in a recent podcast that Americans “don’t believe science and they don’t believe authority.” The audacity of that statement is mind-boggling, but typical of America’s elites. They believe themselves to be more intelligent than everyone else, and they expect everyone else to defer to them and their power over us. Any pushback or criticism of their policies, no matter how thorough or well-reasoned, is then derided not as legitimate criticism but as the result of ignorance and closed-mindedness.
Let’s unpack Fauci’s science comments first. Fauci went on to say, “So when they see someone up in the White House, which has an air of authority to it, who’s talking about science, that there are some people who just don’t believe that – and that’s unfortunate because, you know, science is truth.” No, actually, science is not truth. Science is a process of seeking to find the truth about the world around us. Properly performed, science will result in finding the truth. But the scientific process today has been so perverted by politics and government agendas that most scientists come to their conclusions first, then perform studies that they use to back up their pre-ordained conclusions.
Thanks to the internet, more and more people are becoming aware of these problems with the performance of science today. They understand that just because a scientist does something or says something doesn’t mean that that is science, or scientific, or science-based. But scientists have been so propagandized throughout their careers that they actually believe that they are more knowledgeable than everyone else. They consider themselves akin to Plato’s philosopher kings, and treat those outside their scientific bubble as little more than children. Is it any wonder that those of us looking at them and their actions objectively are waking up so that we don’t just roll over and accede to their every wish?
When it comes to authority, Americans have always had an anti-authoritarian streak, and for good reason. We threw off the yoke of British oppression, we’ve long been wary of the increased centralization coming from Washington, and we learned the lessons of the 20th century as we saw what fascism and communism did to nations around the world. We want no part of that, so when authority figures tell us we have to do something, our reflexive reaction is to say, “No, we won’t.”
If Fauci and his ilk want people to do something, they have to make the case for doing it. They can present a reasoned and thought-out explanation for what they’re doing. But they don’t do that. Their arguments consist mostly of “I’m a scientist and an authority figure, so you should do what I say” type of arguments. The American people are sick and tired of that type of attitude and those types of commands. And the more Fauci and his cronies attempt to engage in that type of behavior, the more fed up Americans will get. Fauci’s attitude will only backfire on him, and result in even more people turning their backs on America’s political class and supporting President Trump and others like him who want to drain the swamp.