The Great Reveal

I am mulling the idea that we are now in a time of The Great Reveal - a period when, nationally and internationally, what was thought to be known is turned on its head. A realigning of expectations.

The Great Reveal is manifested mostly through both politics and epistemology.

In politics, the fundamental phenomenon has been the rejection of the Mandarin Class by their citizens in country after county across the OECD - USA, Britain, France, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Germany, etc.

In epistemology, the fundamental phenomenon has been the revelation that most experts are wrong most the time about most their predictions. That what is taught as true cannot be uncritically accepted as true because too often it is demonstrably not true.

I don't have this well thought out yet but here is an example.

In All the Progressive Plotters by Victor Davis Hanson, Hanson is piling fact on fact in order to make an argument without quite being completely explicit. He ends with:

The final irony? If the CIA, FBI, and DOJ have gone the banana republic way of Lois Lerner’s IRS and shredded the Constitution, they still failed to remove Donald Trump.

Trump still stands. In Nietzschean fashion what did not kill him apparently only made him stronger.

Agreed. Intentionally or unintentionally, the old establishment is self-destructing.

And as an aside, Hanson sparks the visual image of Trump as an alligator - kind of primitive, indisputably dangerous, and seemingly archaic; and yet . . .. He keeps on going and thriving. He may lack elegance and refinement and finesse but he is sophisticated in his fashion, frighteningly effective, and remarkably resilient.

The establishment politicians and mainstream journalists all seem as domesticated bunnies hopping around him, complaining about his brutishness, never quite understanding that they are bunnies hopping near an alligator.

Hanson's article is a catalog of the reveals. The Great Revealing of the past three years, of which Trump is merely an instrument, includes

The moral bankruptcy of the Mandarin Class with its own self-inflicted crisis of violence against women, anti-semitism, religious intolerance and race-based bigotry.

The revelation of universities as fact-free, freedom suppressing, speech suppressing, commercial enterprises riddled with racial bias, anti-semitism, and corruption among their administrators.

The self-serving ends of technology giants willing to flood the nation with H-1B and H-2B visas to keep tech costs low, collude with one another to suppress wage increases, and exploit citizen information without permission.

The incapacity and disinterest of the mainstream-media to play a straight bat when reporting the news. In fact, a willingness to bend their approach for partisan goals.

The revelation that the Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? problem first revealed by the behavior of J. Edgar Hoover ending only with his death in 1972, was never solved and is still with us. That the IRS, CIA, NSA, FBI, and other intelligence agencies, or at least their leadership, were pursuing individual or coordinated strategies against the democratic institutions of our republic.

That individuals vote their actual interests rather than their abstract "group" interests. See Hispanics in support of border security as an example.

That so-called experts are often merely credentialed husks rather than credible forecasters. Economic outcomes are being achieved which were said to be impossible. International problems are being solved which were said to be insoluble. Bipartisan consensus is being achieved in areas with the most improbable protagonists, etc. Conviction is no substitute for competence.

The list goes on and on, some of it increasingly controversial (so far.)