The Fauci Paradox tempts us to allow scientists to regulate science, to Follow the Science and Trust the Experts, but trusting the experts can lead us to our doom as scientists are so prone to short-term ambitions and so limited in their knowledge of other human affairs and longer-term objectives of civilization that, given the opportunity, they are likely to open Pandora’s Box
If you held Lucas’s persuasion, you will re-live all the negative interactions you had with the people of Cole’s persuasion. You will be exposed again to the raw aggression, cruelty, and apathy that you found pervasive during the COVID Pandemic. You will find humor throughout the book for all of the characters. You will laugh out loud at the conclusion.
When we see no repentance but rather a continuation and escalation of the catastrophic policies that got us into this mess, it’s hard to continue to believe it’s just all one big mistake.
Truth-telling, or in ancient Greek, parrhesia, is something different. It is what one does when you tell or speak the truth exactly as you experience or perceive it, with no punches pulled. You don’t have to call the proverbial spade a shovel (unless this is what it takes to get through to your interlocutor), but you have to speak truthfully without holding back. This is particularly relevant for speaking (or writing) in public, where you run the risk of exposing yourself to harsh criticism.
Growing up in a nice suburb and studying at a brand-name university one can really come to believe that life is inherently well-ordered, and that “doing well” within it is mostly about getting in with the right people and following the right rules and processes.
If there is anything that the Covid phenomenon has shown us, it is that in the third decade of the 21st century, it is precisely our most putatively literate classes that are least capable of accepting the various states of contingency implicit in the work of engaging with the vast complexity of the world.
The essential problem has never been about one’s IQ. Many highly intelligent people (in an academic sense) swallowed a very dubious narrative, while others less academically gifted did not. The real divider was the ability and inclination to think critically about it.
The Covid Narrative Flunked the Critical Thinking Test Read More
The book is an act of intimidation. It presages growing governmentalization, it advocates growing governmentalization, and communicates: Obey us or get hurt. Knuckle under or we will hurt you. The book is not only anti-liberal in its political outlook, it is illiberal in its manner of discoursing. Its whole manner is dishonest; the book is disagreeable to any dignified and self-respecting reader.
Government actively steals time. Other peoples’ time is never, ever a consideration. Abject fear is the tool, or in the case of a Census Bureau survey, fear of inundation with “official” emails is the tool. The census bureau (and IRS) actively steal my time. Three years were stolen from the world’s population when fear of a virus overrode rational analysis of its characteristics and effects.
During lockdowns, I opposed prolonged public school closures (and lost my job over it), it was not just children and their right to an education I was standing up for. It was women too. Women who disproportionately are primary caregivers for their children, even while they work full-time. And it was women who dropped out of the workforce in droves during covid, out of sheer necessity in order to educate their children when Zoom school proved useless.
Such attacks are bound to occur, virtually on a daily basis, such as the spectre of renewed lockdowns and mask mandates, alluded to above. This calls for resolute, ingenious activity, modelled on those of Odysseus, as well as perseverance in the quest for reaching one’s cultural and spiritual home. With determination and confidence this can be achieved.
Post-Covid, the crusades of our polarized country continue to play out in the area of children’s literature. Why? Because adults have co-opted the art that used to be a sanctuary for the readers and seekers and thinkers of a new generation. By using school libraries as a battering ram for their political positions, grown people continue stealing from the experiences of children. There is no privacy, or autonomy, for teens in America. Their stories are nothing but cannon fodder for the culture wars.
How Young Adult Literature Became the Playground, and Battleground, for Adults Read More
