Eyes Wide Shut

 

All the usual sources of authority that we have always relied upon seem to have gone wrong. We can no longer trust cardinals or even the Vatican and the pope to be seeking and speaking truth without fear or favour. We cannot trust governments and ministers to be acting in the public interest. We cannot trust the press to hold them to account. We cannot trust the universities to be dispassionately concerned with the pursuit of knowledge. We certainly cannot trust the secular schools. We cannot any longer hold the fond delusion that scientists are objective and never fudge data, that “science” is an unimpeachable authority. We cannot trust the professions to behave ethically. Who can we trust?

Yet a few figures have emerged. We may not always agree with them; they may not always be right; but they at least seem to be seeking the truth and right. They at least do not seem to be lying and trying to trick us. Joe Rogan, Donald Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr., J.K. Rowling, Elon Musk…

One reason the current feud between Candace Owens and the Daily Wire has become so newsworthy on the right is because it makes the Daily Wire folks look hypocritical—another trusted source of authority selling out to a special interest, Israel. I think this is the wrong take, but it is what is causing the current consternation.

I might add Pierre Poilievre or Nigel Farage to the list. I hesitate, because they are both primarily skilled rhetoricians, salesmen. There is nothing dishonourable in that, but there is room to wonder if they always mean what they say. It is not the place of the rhetorician to be an authority. There are attack dogs, and there are shepherd dogs. 

No doubt there is cause for suspicion of some on the list I do give. How can Donald Trump be taken seriously as a voice against the establishment? He is the establishment: from New York upper society, from an established family, went to the posh schools, a billionaire. Hobnobbing for years with the A-listers. How Can RFK? Who’s more establishment than a Kennedy? How can Elon Musk, the richest man in the world?

But that is exactly why they can speak out: being made, they are not on the make. Being established, they at least stand a chance of being too established to be destroyed for speaking out of turn—although it is obviously being tried, against Trump, against Kennedy, against Rowling, against Rogan. They are brave, but at least have a decent chance of surviving.

Tulsi Gabbard? How does she get away with it? She’s not rich. But she has the female form of riches. She’s too beautiful to be destroyed or silenced.

Many of these have begun speaking out against the establishment “narrative” only recently. Even Trump until 2011 or so was not visibly Republican or a dissenter or on the right. Something is changing. A tide is turning.

If only “establishment” figures are as yet speaking out, this tells us that a good many other people, less invested in the status quo, would also turn against it if they thought they could. A very large number of people, we can deduce, is being cowed into silence and compliance. A further large number of people have been flying monkeys. We begin to see it in the Bud Light and Disney buycotts. 

This may include many supposed authority figures. I think I begin to see signals from the pope himself that he feels trapped and does not necessarily want to be identified with his own recent actions. Benedict, after all, complained of having no real authority over the Vatican bureaucracy. “My authority ends at that door.” Biden certainly looks like a trapped and frightened old man with someone pulling his strings. 

This sounds like a house of cards. People are being silenced and pressganged into lynch mobs out of fear, and there may in the end be little behind the curtain; only a malicious but timid charlatan or two.

If and when the iron hand of cancel culture that is oppressing the many falters, if people like the Rogans, or Trumps, or Rowlings, escape destruction, there will be a revolutionary force released, like steam from a ruptured boiler. 

Let it be soon, O Lord.