For years, European policymakers had assured the world that the
relatively rapid “transition” to “green” energy was the world’s
preordained future — regardless of the costs.
Accordingly, many European Union governments followed the advice of
green experts. They eagerly shut down coal, natural gas, and nuclear
power plants to transition immediately to “renewable energy.”
Most citizens were afraid to object that in cloudy, cold Germany
solar panels were not viable methods of electrical generation —
especially in comparison to the country’s vast coal deposits and its
large, model nuclear power industry.
As a result, German government officials warn that this winter, in
19th-century fashion, families will have to burn wood — the dirtiest of
modern fuels — to endure the cold. And there is further talk of “warm
rooms,” where like pre-civilizational tribal people, the elderly will
bunch together within a designated heated room to keep alive.
Sri Lanka may be the first modern nation to adopt deliberate policies
that have led to mass hunger and bankruptcy. The government, for a
variety of reasons, listened to foreign advocates of back-to-nature
organic farming, specifically outright abandonment of highly effective
synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.
The result was endemic crop failure. Cash crops for export failed.
Widespread hunger followed. Without foreign exchange, it became
impossible to import key staples like food and fuel.
Sri Lanka once had a per capita income twice that of nearby India. Now it cannot feed or fuel itself.
Unfortunately, its incompetent government trusted radical
environmental advisors, many of them foreign experts. Sri Lanka believed
it could become the woke darling of the “Environmental, Social,
Governance” movement, and in that way draw in unlimited Western woke
investment.
Instead, it has embraced a policy of national suicide.
Recently, a group of 55 distinguished pro-administration economists
assured us that President Joe Biden’s massive borrowing and new
entitlements agenda were not inflationary. In September 2021, these
economists with 14 Nobel prize winners among them declared that Biden’s
inflationary policies would actually “ease” inflation.
Last month, inflation spiked to an annualized rate of 9.1%.
None of these “blue-chip” economists have offered any apologies for
lending their prestige to convince Americans of the absurd: that
inflating the money supply, spiking new government spending,
incentivizing labor non-participation, and keeping interest rates
artificially low would not cause inflation.
In late July 2021, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, claimed that the Taliban takeover “was not a foregone
conclusion.” He bragged that 34 provincial capitals were still in Afghan
government hands.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin nodded in approval. Less than a month
later, the entire Afghan government collapsed. The American military
fled in its most ignominious retreat in over 50 years. Milley had been
parroting Biden’s earlier prompt that a Taliban victory after the
American evacuation was “highly unlikely.”
On the eve of the 2020 election, news accounts revealed some of the
lurid contents on Hunter Biden’s lost laptop. Emails and photos began to
incriminate the entire Biden family for leveraging millions of dollars
from foreign grandees for access to a bought Joe Biden.
Fifty retired intelligence officers, however, without evidence, swore
that the laptop’s appearance could be due to “Russian disinformation.”
Yet after authentication — Hunter himself never denied the lost laptop
was his — few if any of those marquee “experts” apologized for their
election-driven dissimulation.
At the height of the massive 2020 enforced quarantine and lockdowns,
some 1,200 medical and health “professionals” signed a petition claiming
that thousands of left-wing protestors should be exempt from the very
quarantine they had insisted on for others.
The experts absurdly claimed that denying tens of thousands the right
to break quarantines to protest in the street was a greater health
threat than COVID-19.
FBI Director James Comey doggedly pursued the “Russian collusion”
hoax. At one point he hired the discredited Christopher Steele to supply
the FBI with information from his fantasy dossier.
Once called to account, on some 245 occasions before Congress, Comey
swore that he could either not remember or had no knowledge about the
questions asked of him.
His successor FBI interim Director Andrew McCabe admittedly lied on
four occasions to federal officials. Special counsel and former FBI
director Robert Mueller himself swore under oath that he knew nothing
either about the Steele dossier or Fusion GPS — the twin catalysts for
his entire investigation.
FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith admitted to altering a federal court document in efforts to convict an innocent suspect.
All these depressing examples have one common denominator: Elite
experts and degreed professionals massaged and warped their knowledge to
serve ideological masters, rather than the truth.
In the process, they caused untold damage to their country and fellow
citizens. They disgraced their profession. They tarnished the
scientific community. And sold their souls to ideologues.
Is it any wonder why the Western public has lost confidence in their degreed and credentialed elites?
