Originally published via American Thinker:
Consider Carl Sagan's warning here – resurfaced by Jimmy Dore -- taken from an interview with Charlie Rose, way before COVID-19 or any of the other permanent technocracy-mediated emergencies emerged.
"There’s two kinds of dangers. One is what I just talked about. That we’ve arranged a society based on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology, and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. I mean, who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don’t know anything about it?
And the second reason that I’m worried about this is that science is more than a body of knowledge. It’s a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility.
If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan political or religious who comes ambling along.
It’s a thing that Jefferson laid great stress on. It wasn’t enough, he said, to enshrine some rights in a Constitution or a Bill of Rights. The people had to be educated, and they had to practice their skepticism and their education. Otherwise we don’t run the government—the government runs us."
The entire ethos of actual science in practice – to bastardize a phrase from Ronald Reagan, if you will permit – is "distrust and verify."
Scientists are humans. Humans are not gods. Ergo, scientists are not God, no matter how much Swamp creatures such as Anthony Fauci insist to the contrary.
For that matter, government bureaucrats are just humans – and, generally speaking, not particularly admirable or honorable ones.
"It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office."
-H. L. Mencken
Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Follow his stuff Substack if you are inclined to support independent journalism free of corporate slant. Also, keep tabs via Twitter. For hip Armageddon Prose t-shirts, hats, etc., peruse the merch store. Insta-tip jar and Bitcoin public address: bc1qvq4hgnx3eu09e0m2kk5uanxnm8ljfmpefwhawv
the deck is heavily stacked against any individual human to become sceptical. All of us are first taught to OBEY for at least the first one or two decades of our lives. The few who manage to turn themselves around enough to ask WHY are hounded, shunned and often eliminated. It takes a certain amount of courage to just sit at a screen when no one is looking, to ask why . Comfort and security will always beckon from the status quo. On top of this every ism has been bastardized so it becomes a lifelong challenge just to figure out whats true.
Thanks for the reassuirng message.
Whatever failings Mr Sagan had, his analysis and justifications for his conclusions posted here, were bang on.
Heaven help us.