Ordinary Americans are growing wary of the so-called experts. This phenomenon extends well beyond the biased purveyors of fake news. Most of us gave up on the liberal media long ago. According to Gallup, we are now an overwhelming majority.
Today we include a growing group of experts and insiders, otherwise known as the elites. We’ve been mislead. We’ve been talked down to and dismissively treated like children who can’t handle the truth. Opinions are presented as facts. Decisions and pronouncements that were supposedly data driven regularly ignore data at odds with the decision makers’ opinions. The infamous hockey stick global warming model comes to mind.
The insider/experts sense that their act is wearing thin. So more of them are resorting to bald faced lies. A bald faced lie is so brazen that it cannot hide behind even a whisker of truth.
Consider the recent article in The Atlantic that claimed to have not one, but four anonymous insiders who supposedly heard President Trump say that fallen war heroes were “suckers and losers.” Only the committed Trump haters believed the story. The rest of us found it laughable. Even insiders John Bolton and Gen. John Kelly said it never happened. Now the whole web is falling apart like so much fine gossamer.
Credibility and reputation have become passé.
As the election draws closer and the Biden team becomes more desperate we can expect a nonstop litany of half truths and bald faced lies from the usual suspects.
Now comes a CBS poll that reveals that only 54 percent of Americans trust the CDC for the health information they provide concerning the Wuhan virus. Down from 86 percent just a few months ago. There was a time before science was politicized when health experts were trusted implicitly. No more. The experts have squandered their credibility largely by stifling honest scientific debate. Anyone who questions the official narrative must be silenced. It is sophomoric.
Witness the arrogant treatment that dozens of brave clinicians have received over their use of hydroxychloroquine. Not satisfied with simply being dismissive, several governors (including Minnesota’s) actually banned its distribution. Our FDA now publicly discourages its use outside hospital settings. The FDA must know that the proponents have consistently argued that once people are sick enough to be hospitalized, the benefits are largely lost. Yale epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch lays out a strong case in Newsweek. He asserts that the hydroxy cocktail is the key to defeating this virus. He backs it up with compelling evidence. The silence from Dr. Fauci and CDC experts is deafening. It may have cost tens of thousands of lives.
This is only one example that drains the credibility of our health experts. A growing number of Americans are questioning everything about our response to this virus. Michael Barone argues against the shutdowns in a recent column in the NY Post. Some of us are old enough to remember that Woodstock went on as planned in the middle of the Hong Kong flu pandemic, which incidentally killed nearly as many Americans.
There is some hard evidence that the lockdowns may have been counterproductive. Investment guru Donald Lefkin used sophisticated analytics to crunch the data. He reported that states and regions that imposed the most oppressive lockdown policies had the highest number of cases. This comes as no surprise to Minnesotans. We saw this difference with our neighbors in South Dakota. Minnesota was shut down and had a death rate nearly three times higher than South Dakota, which never closed down. Similar results can be seen by comparing Sweden to most other European nations.
If you haven’t read it, check out Questions for Dr. Fauci in the American Spectator. Three MDs teamed up to write a rather long series of pointed questions directed to our Covid Czar. Questions that are very persuasive. Once again, these questions have gone unasked by our hopelessly corrupt media and unanswered by the experts.
When the history of this year is written (by objective historians) it will not likely be kind to the Chicken Little elites who drove the panic and our economy off the cliff.
Benjamin Franklin warned “reputations, like fine china are easily broken and never well mended.” These experts have done it to themselves. We shouldn’t have to live in a world filled with cynicism. Too many of our modern-day experts, anonymous sources and insiders have left us no choice.
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Gil Gutknecht
Gil Gutknecht is a former Republican congressman from Minnesota.