More on the COVID Lab-Leak Coverup Conspiracy (With Comments on Our General Predicament)

Two relevant aspects of contemporary progressivism:

A general, core principle of progressivism:

[1] Government should largely be conducted by experts.

Two facts about our current situation:

[2]  Many "experts" are not, in fact, experts.

[3]  The "elites" / the "expert class" has been ideologically captured by the left.

We've started to see how the sausage is made. An early glimpse was Climate Gate, the scandal surrounding the "hockey-stick graph." The most recent is the lab-leak conspiracy coverup. MaskGate was another small episode with the same structure: the experts/"experts" lied about the evidence/facts in order to manipulate the public into doing what the experts/"experts" thought we should do. 

   Another, even more egregious--and currently on-going--disaster concerns (trans)gender ideology. In this case, the core "experts"--academicians in obfuscatory, generally anti-scientific pseudo-disciplines like women's and gender studies, queer theory, etc.--are misrepresented as genuine experts, and their anti- and pseudo-scientific, speculative musings and ravings are misrepresented as something like science or even indisputable fact. These pseudo-disciplines are political-leftist at their core, and their purpose is largely activist. There is really no distinction between such "scholars" and activists. Together, they cook up often patently ridiculous theories (often something about something something social construction). The ideological capture of the softer sciences--including psychology, medicine and medical research--now means that the "scholar-activists" in the humanities and social sciences and grievance studies in between have a plausibly-scientific audience eager to adopt whatever nonsense they may output. This is "idea laundering": there is no wall between activism and scholarship in much of the humanities, social sciences, and grievance studies. The wall between scientists and such "scholar-activists" is more permeable by the week. Political preferences are dressed up as theories (usually in the jargon of recent Continental philosophy), handed over to leftist "researchers" in the softer / more politicized sciences, where they are declared The Science. "Science" then speaks, ex cathedra, to the public, informing the hoi polloi that black is white, night is day, and men are women. 

   And one more layer: the activists, "scholar-activists" and useful idiots on social media create a "cancel culture" that exerts psychological, social, political and financial (including career) pressure on anyone with the temerity to question "The" "Science." 

   You'd think this wouldn't work...but the system has evolved into a viciously effective means of thought- and social-control.

   'Populism' is now a dirty word. But on one interpretation, it means: opposition to progressivism--i.e., opposition to government/control by "elites"/"experts." But the more incompetent and unbalanced the "elite" / "expert" class becomes, the more reasonable that brand of populism becomes. 

   Etc., etc.