31 Comments
Sep 15, 2021Liked by Leighton Woodhouse

When we look at the numbers from those autocratic monoliths such as the CDC we can see that the average age for death from this disease is 80+, and even then it hits those with multiple co-morbidities; overweight, diabetic, heart issues, etc. The chance of death from COVID below that age is significantly overstated by orders of magnitude. We can all look at the infections in both masked and unmasked areas and see that these curves and rates are the same.

We have also seen that the Ivory Towers, as our host has so well put it, put segments of our society through events such as the Tuskeegee syphilis experiments to devastating effects on both health and trust. Is it any wonder that there is a vaccine hesitancy among certain groups?

I come from exactly the same environment as Mr. Woodhouse, Berkeley, with one generation removed. My mother was born at Alta Bates, both of her parents attended Berkeley high school, and her grandfather was a prof at Cal from the early 20th century. I know full well what he speaks of in the arrogance and hubris of those people, that class.

Covid can kill. But, and this is the most important part, so can a car crash. Anything that carries risk can kill, and we aren't managing our risk. I am vaccinated as I generally agree with that, but I do not agree with destroying bodily autonomy by forcing this on the reluctant. They are also carrying their risk, at a level they are comfortable with. We are shutting down polite society to placate the most risk-averse among us. We are willing to destroy our hard-fought civil liberties for this.

Expand full comment
Sep 15, 2021Liked by Leighton Woodhouse

This is a terrific article. Thanks for this.

"The internet undermined every aspect of this legitimacy. It’s not so much that expert knowledge was democratized — though to a certain extent it was — but that the internet kept providing the public glimpses into the hitherto sealed off ivory towers, peeks behind the doors of the sausage factories where these discourses were produced. And when that happened, what was revealed was mediocrity. "

Bam. Nailed it.

Expand full comment

This article is a perfect example of why I subscribed to your Substack. Thank you for another thoughtful piece. What I find interesting, if it weren't so distressing, is that when I went to college (granted, it was a state school in the rural-er Midwest two decades ago, but the instructors, per the norm, were both liberal and Democrat), I was taught skepticism of authority/experts. If there was one group that would have told you institutions are made up of people and people are not altruistic (on the contrary, they are exceedingly dedicated to their own self-interest), it would have been my instructors. So I often wonder what happened exactly. Now it's the people with less education that seem to have a better grip on what actually drives our system and why, in this country in particular, you can't take anything anyone tells you on blind faith. It would be an interesting phenomenon to study if there weren't so much riding on bringing us all back from the abyss.

Expand full comment

I have been listing to a lot of books while working a chainsaw and wood splitter during my day job, which is my sort of bootstrapped post doc research regimen. I listened to a lot of Foucault this summer and when I got to the passage you cite, the one about the plague, I wanted to write something similar to what you've done here—but you went further with it and in a different direction that I would have. I really appreciate this article and that you are focusing on COVID as a deserved crisis of legitimacy, while also touching on the ways that power takes advantage of crisis. It's pretty cringe when liberals just go berserk and scapegoat the incredulous among us as barbarians.

Expand full comment

Thank you for this article. I agree with the conclusion and general premise. But, I feel there are a few side notes worth pointing out:

A) The 2008 housing crisis only appeared to be caused by Wall Street. By a huge proportion, the largest owners of subprime loans were (and continue to be) the GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These entities, after being propped up by government advantages, drove (and continue to drive) the standard lending terms in the industry. Truly private firms are forced to choose between conforming to their risky standards or leaving subprime loans entirely. The point being, the 2008 meltdown is not really an example of a Wall Street transition that let us down. It was a case of our government officials using a noble goal ("housing for all") as a cash cow and then happily letting everyone believe that it was all Wall Streets fault.

B) At least by economic metrics that he could control, Greenspan presided over a period of relative stability and improvement. I don't believe he can be reasonably faulted for the decisions of Barney Frank, etc.

To me, the obvious solution to the credibility problem would be for the guilty to be very publicly thrown out of office. Major house-cleaning efforts if not closures of many government agencies are needed, the intelligence agencies in particular.

If I could go back in time, I would have guessed that the internet allowing us to better see government officials making corrupt and flawed decisions would result in an improved ability to at least replace those individuals. Sadly, it appears that ramped up propaganda is so effective that people are getting away with blatant incompetence and criminal behavior in government with very little risk of consequence.

People need to understand that this is no longer a left-right issue. We are dealing with a class of people using government to keep the gravy train going for themselves and their allies, at a great and growing expense to everyone else.

Expand full comment
Oct 22, 2021Liked by Leighton Woodhouse

“Berserk” comes from “bear shirt”, the garments Norse warriors would wear in combat:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/berserk

Expand full comment

This is one of the best things I've read in a while. Extremely persuasive. I'm so glad you started this Stack.

Just one addendum. I think the Washington Consensus manifests itself in a symbiotic way with the Congress/White House-to-private-sector pipeline. More troublesome, however, is the reverse: regulatory capture. If the Wizards are no longer government technocrats but the private-sector lever-pullers, the obvious next step is to bring those Wizards into government to "oversee" the industries they came out of. Again & again & again we see how disastrous this is.

Expand full comment

So I empathize and seek to understand...then what?

I just returned from shopping at a big box store, with one of the employees wearing a mask that said "masked by force, not fear." I don't feel irritated by that (though I once might have). I barely have any emotional response when I see someone unmasked in public. Its better for my mental health and I'm a better person when I'm not judgemental.

Understanding and empathy are right up there on my List of Things That Make Us Better.

The fact remains: there is a virulent, deadly disease among us. Some people would rather do nothing.

In your opinion, what would an empathetic policy look like? Vaccinate OR mask seems like the current policy, which in my view is empathetic and not heavy handed, but that isn't working either.

Expand full comment

Another great piece. But I see 9/11 and the War on Terror, more than the Great Recession, as the anvil that broke the camel's back. You begin your piece with a discussion about modern versus medieval warfare. Well, we had twenty years of actual modern versus medieval warfare, and medieval won! Armed with nothing but box cutter knives, 19 individuals organized around a thoroughly retrograde ideology took down the physical symbols of the modern economic system. Then we sent the most advanced military in human history to root out their supporters. After 20 years of fighting, the men in the caves and hills of Afghanistan, armed with AK-47s and improvised explosive devices, drove the U.S. military and its armored Humvees out and promptly regained control of the country.

In the meantime, the foreign policy and military "experts," with bipartisan support, rallied around the war with Iraq, which had nothing to do with anything and was sold to the public through blatant lie after blatant lie. Throughout all of this, the Republicans were the most fervent supporters of the "expert" class. They, more than the liberals, rallied around the bureaucratic establishment. When it became undeniable that the emperor had no clothes, bit by bit over the course of 20 years of wasted blood and treasure, who can blame them for becoming the most distrustful segment of society?

To me, the miserable failures of the war on terror, more than anything else, exposed the establishment for what it is. Modernism squared off against medievalism, and medievalism won. How could anyone have faith in the modern system after that?

My take: The scientific method and rationality are miracles. But "experts" operating within the large institutions that purport to speak for "the science" consistently overestimate their understanding, underestimate the complexity of complex open systems, have an extreme bias in favor of intervention (the bigger, the better), are unusually conformist and subject to social desirability bias, and consistently and dramatically underestimate the danger of negative externalities. For the modern scientific project to survive, its institutions must be destroyed. Science, and policy-making in general, must be radically decentralized in order to survive in a form that can benefit humanity.

Expand full comment

Loved this piece. The first half managed to succinctly summarize my favorite history and philosophy lecturers from high school and college. The pay-off at the end was fantastic.

Side note: I was likely in the minority, but coming out of my undergrad in the 90’s, I was already highly suspicious / skeptical of the Washington Consensus. My first job out of college was in corporate lending, and seeing how lending institutions were frothing at possibilities when deregulation was coming, I had a feeling that when the Glass-Steagall act was repealed in 1999, it would only be a matter of time before the wheels came off the bus.

Expand full comment

Good article - thanks

Expand full comment

Loved this piece. You reference more of the most interesting thinkers than any other journalist I've read (Goffman, Weber, Foucault), and do so in a way that makes them accessible and relevant.

I partially disagree about the Internet being the key to undermining legal-rational authority of the state; it certainly didn't help, but I can't lay this at its feet alone. I think a string of trust-destroying events are what drove this, and it's been multiple generations in the making. One could theorize it started with Viet Nam (I would bet it was earlier even, but it's an easy target): the lying, the government incompetence, the war that looked worse and worse every year during and then after it ended. Follow that up with Watergate, Iran contras, Bill Clinton's inability to tell the truth (and the equally disheartening partisan response), Internet bubble (where the financial industry threw giant wads of money at companies without profit. or revenue. or a product.), the manufacture of the Iraq war for fictional WMD, Enron's horrific fraudulent shell game and how California, the largest state, was duped and exploited by them, the 2008 crash....

Then put all of those into a bowl where the Internet was dividing us both by allowing us to stay in ever-increasingly-hermetic idea spaces, and by robbing us of the most power force of cohesion we had (the mass media which strove to reach as many people as possible and alienate as few as possible -- while this had its problems, it was a unifying influence). Add to the mix covid-19 and a narcissistic blowtorch of a president and stir for a few years. That's the recipe to utterly destroy our faith in the institutions that legitimize the legal-rational authority. It's been eroding for generations, and like an undercut edifice it's finally reached the point where it's collapsed and slid into the sea. The vaccine and mask bully cadre who sneer at "deplorables" are surfing in the froth.

Expand full comment