The COVID-19 pandemic has acted as an acid test for rationality and critical thinking. Very few have passed this test, including way too many people whose opinions I had previously respected. There’s nothing stranger than having read the writings of someone for years, only to see them collapse in fear over the virus, and demand that “something be done!” It’s pathetic, really. And it makes me question the wisdom and insight of everyone. It’s a simple test: find out their opinion of the pandemic, and you’ll know who you’re actually dealing with.
I’ve found that many people I’ve read and respected over the years aren’t critical thinkers to any real degree. Instead, they’ve been able to ape a pseudo-intellectualism, emitting an endless stream of writings, tweets, and interviews with a perfected tone of authority and intelligence. I won’t name any of these “public intellectuals”. I can hardly bear to think about them anymore. And while some of them stumbled out of the fog of hysteria, and now speak against the lockdown ideology, it was their initial reaction that matters.
Michael Malice has dubbed them “midwits”. I’ve thought of them as high-IQ idiots, because I’m sure they do have far higher-than-average measurable intelligence. Which is why this phenomenon is so baffling. PhD’s, scientists, engineers, philosophers, etc., have all fallen before pandemic hysteria.
The true critical thinkers, who have been correct from the very beginning, are for the most part unpolished but effective communicators. They haven’t mastered the excruciatingly pretentious language of the high IQ idiots, but they do communicate their ideas clearly. Most of them are on Twitter or Facebook. Their initial posts, back in March, contained the familiar, not-yet-articulated bafflement at world events spiraling out of control. And the high-IQ idiots circled the wagons around the hysteria narrative, shouting down anyone who questioned where lockdown-ism would lead. Many saw that certain events were setting into motion a process that, once it reached a certain milestone, would not be reversible.
The blind faith in experts must end. We can only trust ourselves with the facts before us. We cannot continue to allow elite intellectuals to interpret reality for us.
