In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need to question the authorities. They’d have the public’s best interests at heart and would seek out the best advice humanly possible before making decisions. They might not get it right—they’re still humans in this world, after all—but they’d at least make honest mistakes that others could learn from.
But we don’t live in a perfect world. We live in this one.
In this one, the powers that be are not to be trusted. They’re so beyond trustworthiness that literally everyone in any position of authority should be questioned about pretty much every decision they make.
Part of what spurred this one was a report dealing with “misinformation.”
Longtime readers know where I fall on this topic, especially when much of the so-called misinformation turned out to be true. It’s been a constant source of anguish for me because of how everyone tripped over themselves to address “misinformation” and, in the process, shut down any dissenting opinions.
This report, in particular, came from RedState:
A recently surfaced recording of a Zoom call between the Biden/Harris team from 2020 reveals disconcerting evidence of the team's intentional targeting and manipulation of voters and relentless bullying of media outlets to control information.
…
One of the key people in this controversy was Biden's Director for Digital Strategy. Rob Flaherty. As RedState's Susie Moore reported (citing a pleading filed in the case):
Among many other things, Mr. Flaherty directly participated in the oral meeting where he and Andrew Slavitt pressured Twitter to de-platform Alex Berenson – critical information that the Government‘s discovery did not reveal. Mr. Flaherty emailed Nick Clegg, a senior Facebook executive, with a link to a Washington Post story about misinformation on Facebook, stating “not even sure what to say at this point.” Mr. Flaherty repeatedly participated in oral meetings with social-media platforms about so-called COVID “misinformation,” as documents filed by Plaintiffs repeatedly attest.
Given this information, it is even more upsetting to hear Flaherty's proud and gleeful remarks on the surfaced Zoom call. “One of the smartest things that the party did itself was over the last couple of years, they actually invested in a team that Tim runs… to detect and track misinformation and misinformation narratives in various corners of the internet and then flag them to platforms as a violation of their policy.”
Of course, later, Flaherty refused to define "misinformation."
And yet, later, we have a quote from Flaherty where he included things like “conversation online about corruption or mental fitness...or [Biden's] record on the Crime Bill” as misinformation. That’s right, Biden’s actual record was getting flagged as misinformation.
And the American people had their media feeds manipulated as a result.
This is but one example of why everything should be questioned.
See, the problem here is that any entity that gets enough power is bound to do what it can to hold onto that power, even above the stated mission. This is summed up in Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy, which states:
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Law also holds that the second group will inevitably seek authority over the organization, and then hold onto it with every fiber of their being.
Yet here’s the thing, if they exist simply to maintain the organization itself and not to serve its stated mission, what will they do to not just keep their hold on the organization but expand it’s authority?
They’ll lie, at a minimum.
But in this case, bureaucracy doesn’t just mean governmental entities. Take Google, for example. It started out with the whole “don’t be evil” thing, and I’d like to believe at least some of them were sincere about that in those early days.
And yet, what have we seen since then? They routinely take steps to moderate what we see and, by extension, what we think.
The government deserves to be questioned at every turn, but so does corporate America. Why are they spending money on DEI initiatives that aren’t producing better leaders or workers, then expecting us to pay for it via higher prices? Why are private entities driving up housing prices with their investment strategies?
Every “authority,” be they government, corporate, religious, educational, or any other kind of organization needs to be questioned and questioned repeatedly. They need to justify every move they make and they need to show evidence regarding why they’re doing it. They should have to answer for every move. If they fart, they’d better explain that they had no choice.
And I’m not saying smaller organizations should get a pass, either. Far too many of those want to be big organizations and the Iron Law of Bureaucracy deals with organizations, not just the big ones.
We the People have been too damn trusting for too damn long.
They lied to us about COVID and where it came from. They lied to us about the efficacy of masks—several times, as a matter of fact. They’ve lied to us about literally anything and everything and they cannot be trusted to stop and suddenly start telling us the truth.
Question everything.
Question it while you still can, because make no mistake, they don’t want you to be able to question them ever again.
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