Stop Genuflecting at the Altar of “Experts”

CLAY: I want to play this clip ’cause I’m starting to see, Buck, more and more doctors, it’s amazing how many people are so afraid of being outside of the consensus opinion that they won’t say what they actually believe, which would, by the way, change the consensus opinion, right, because everybody actually said what they think, then our conversation and debate, the marketplace of ideas would actually be more honest. But Lucy McBride spoke out and said, “Doctors have an obligation to help people frame risk.” Again, for so much of this entire covid discussion, it’s been about terrifying people, and we’ve had almost no discussion of probability or risk analysis or trying to make sane decisions. Play cut 13.

MCBRIDE: Those of us in the medical profession — particularly those of us who are patient facing, who help people every day — understand their unique vulnerabilities for disease whether it’s from covid or cancer. We have an obligation to help people frame risk — to deliver fact-based, nuanced information. Fear does harm. It only makes people afraid! It doesn’t affect people’s decisions. So when I’m on Twitter or right now with you, I’m trying to help people understand that look, Your risk for covid is as different as someone else’s. And revving the emotional engines of people’s anxiety only does harm.

BUCK: This is what we’ve been talking about for how many months now —

CLAY: Two years! Two years, basically.

BUCK: — about reasonable risk acceptance. And you’ve started to see this. I believe there was an AP fact check maybe over the weekend of this term that has started to get used, and it is one of the failures — I’m gonna say this in general: one of the failures — of conservatives on the right is that we like to use the lexicon that exists. The left creates new terms and terminology and changes terms and terminology to suit its political needs. We’d have better… People say, “Why do you refer to them as commies?” Because it’s disparaging and they’re a bunch of Marxists. That’s why I refer to them as commies.

CLAY: It’s also funny. It’s also a funny insult.

BUCK: Why, thank you, my good man.

CLAY: Yes. I like it. I agree.

BUCK: Me too. So that’s why I refer to them as commies. But here you have mass formation psychosis. You started to see this, people have been talking about it essentially as a more official sounding mass hysteria, “dogs and cats, living together, mass hysteria,” as my man Clay certainly knows.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Ghostbusters.

CLAY: Great Ghostbusters reference.

BUCK: So now they did a fact check saying like the American Psychiatric Association doesn’t recognize this term or doesn’t recognize it in the context of how it’s been used. Whatever. Who cares! The point is, people have lost their gosh-darn minds here, okay? People are having a mental break down — and if you’re wondering what I mean, go ask your neighbor who’s wandering the woods alone with a mask on, “What are you doing?” They will look at you like you are crazy. This is an anxiety disorder. There’s something wrong with people. The circuitry of their brain isn’t functioning the way that it should when it comes to risk.

CLAY: Also, that’s an opinion! You can’t fact check an opinion and label it as false! Tonight, Buck, Alabama is playing Georgia. I am betting on Georgia to win this is game. They are a 2-1/2 point favorite. That is my opinion. Georgia is going to beat Alabama. Lots of other people out there can have a different opinion. Alabama is gonna beat Georgia, whatever it is. I can’t be fact checked today on that opinion. Now, I will either be right or wrong based on the result of the game. But the inability…

It’s important to notice what’s going on here now. They are expanding their fact-check universe to the point they are now fact-checking opinions, which is impossible. Fact-checking opinions is nonsensical, because all it’s predicated on is the idea of what opinions you are allowed to have or not to have. So if somebody wants to argue, “Hey, we’re in the midst of a mass hysteria over covid,” that’s their opinion. You can’t then say, “This is factually inaccurate,” because it’s their opinion of what’s going on in society.

BUCK: The dark core of Fauciism all along has been the pretense or the make-believe of “this is fact.”

CLAY: “I am science.”

BUCK: “I am science,” as Fauci says, area actually are making judgment calls that other people could and as we see now should have reasonably disagreed with. To pretend that your judgment is fact is the heart of authoritarianism. It’s “this has to be done, it must be this way, there’s no other argument allowed.” That started in March of 2020 — and that it has lingered this long is a function of the libs, the leftists, the commies seizing so many of the institutions, not just of government, but also of mass communication and using it to propagandistic effect.

CLAY: Amen — and, Buck, the entire purpose of politicians is not to constantly genuflect at the altar of “experts.” It’s to weigh conflicting opinion and make a decision about what we should do, and I feel like that’s been totally lost in all discussion. Politics, by and large… When you are voting for someone for an office, you are trusting their judgment. Everybody’s busy; they don’t have time to look at every bill. When you press that button, when you make that decision, when you pull that lever…

However your vote is tallied, when you do that, you are saying, “I trust your judgment.” That’s really the most important choice that you are making is in their judgment. When a politician says, “I’m going to defer to an unelected bureaucrat like Dr. Fauci; whatever he says to do, I’m going to do,” well, why in the world did I elect you? I didn’t elect Dr. Fauci at all. Use your reason, your intelligence, and your judgment to analyze conflicting data and make rational choices. We totally skipped over that, and the media made it worse, Buck, because they said, “Well, if you’re not listening to this particular scientist, you are anti-science.” No! That’s what everything is: Balancing out different competing interests is the essence of judgment in adulthood.