Those of us skeptical of lockdowns, masks and other restrictions know the answers to those questions. “So the question is, will our ruling apparatus follow a similar trajectory as the pandemic gives them a taste of extended emergency power? At what point do the ceremonies of political correctness become a mere façade, a set of dogmas that nobody actually believes, but which make a useful instrument of social control?” Today it is basically a crime syndicate that looks upon the norms of “the international community” the way the Sinaloa Cartel might look upon the Girl Scouts. It is easy to forget that the CCP was once a highly ideological organisation. “The pandemic has revealed a growing affinity between Western institutional players and the authoritarian Chinese regime. At the end of that essay, Crawford asked some especially important questions: If anything, this dynamic has become ridiculously pronounced in the 12 months since then.
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They are very small businesses: an environment largely free of the moral fashions and corresponding knowledge claims that set the tone in large organisations. I am regularly in welding supply stores, auto parts stores and other light-industry venues. “Among those who work in the economy of things, on the other hand, you see greater skepticism toward experts (whether they make their claim on epistemic or moral grounds) and less readiness to accept the adjustment of social norms by fiat -whether that means using new pronouns or wearing surgical masks. Deferring to expert authority is a habit inculcated in the ‘knowledge economy,’ naturally enough the basic currency of this economy is epistemic prestige. “Acquiescence in this appears to be most prevalent among the meritocrats who staff the managerial layer of society. It’s been nearly a year since Crawford, in his first piece for UnHerd, ruminated on the dangers of safetyism, and it was then that I realized how deeply neurotic Western societies have become: But what sort of regime are we to be citizens of?” Withdrawal from such encounter now has the stamp of good citizenship, i.e., good hygiene. Solidarity, in turn, is the best bulwark against despotism, as Hannah Arendt noted in On The Origins of Totalitarianism. “Perhaps it is through such microscopic moments that we become aware of ourselves as a people, bound up in a shared fate. To hide our faces behind masks is to withdraw this invitation. By the nakedness of our faces we encounter one another as individuals, and in doing so we experience fleeting moments of grace and trust. “Perhaps the pandemic has merely accelerated, and given official warrant to, our long slide toward atomisation. Ominously, we are being prepared for ‘climate lockdowns.’ “ In the first week of the Biden administration, the Senate majority leader urged the president to declare a “climate emergency” and assume powers that would authorise him to sidestep Congress and rule by executive fiat. “The spectacular success of ‘public health’ in generating fearful acquiescence in the population during the pandemic has created a rush to take every technocratic-progressive project that would have poor chances if pursued democratically, and cast it as a response to some existential threat. Indeed, the institutionalized enterprise of science, the combination of government agencies and private industries amassing greater technocratic measures to lay claim over a widening realm of matters: As a way of generating knowledge, it is the pride of science to be falsifiable (unlike religion).” The ‘anti-science’ tendencies of populism are in significant measure a response to the gap that has opened up between the practice of science and the ideal that underwrites its authority. This contradiction is now out in the open. But it is precisely the apolitical image of science, as disinterested arbiter of reality, that makes it such a powerful instrument of politics. As a practical matter, ‘politicised science’ is the only kind there is (or rather, the only kind you are likely to hear about).
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