[D66] Covid-19: Why Did So Many Intellectuals Refuse to Speak Out?

[René Oudeweg]

brownstone.org
<https://brownstone.org/articles/why-did-so-many-intellectuals-refuse-to-speak-out/>



  Why Did So Many Intellectuals Refuse to Speak Out? ⋆ Brownstone Institute

Jeffrey A. Tucker
11-13 minutes
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Think of all the institutions that have marched in lockstep during the
dramatic decline in civilization over three years. It’s been media, Big
Tech, large corporations, academia, the medical industry, central banks,
and government at all levels. They have all been in on the lie. They sat
by and said nothing or even cheered as governments utterly wrecked
rights and liberties that humanity has fought for over 800 years. 

The examples are too numerous to list but one stands out to me. 

For several months, New York City attempted a bold experiment making a
place for vaccinated people only. As a result, no person who chose
against the experimental Covid shot was allowed in restaurants,
theaters, bars, libraries, or museums. Disproportionately hit were 40
percent of black residents who refused the vaccine due to the
community’s deep awareness of the long history of US pharmaceuticals
ties with racial eugenics. 

For decades, US policy has banned practices with disparate impacts on
racial minorities. Then one day, no one cared. 

Where was the outrage? I cannot recall a single voice of opposition
appearing in any major newspaper or mainstream venue. This went on for
months! Only a few of us were yelling about this but we barely got any
traction, despite the deep injustice being perpetrated along strong
racial lines. 

This of course is just one example but thousands. 

Even right now, unvaccinated Canadians are not allowed to cross the
border into the US for business or pleasure or even to see family
members a mile away. This is ongoing. It applies to everyone in the
world except for the hundreds of thousands pouring across the Southern
border, who are not sporting vaccine passports. 

Congress never voted for this. It’s all due to the CDC, which somehow
still retains the power to ruin everyone’s life and liberty despite many
court rulings that have tried to rein in this organization’s power. 

Where is the outrage? Where was the outrage about school and church
closings, the mandatory masking, the wrecked businesses, the bad
science, the astonishing lies foisted on the public day after day?

How the heck did this happen? Why is it still happening? In particular,
where were intellectuals? Yes, some spoke out and were severely punished
for it as a lesson to others. 

The authors of the Great Barrington Declaration
<https://gbdeclaration.org/> have said repeatedly that their short
statement was the least innovative and controversial statement they ever
penned. It was a plain statement of widely accepted public-health
principles applied to the current moment. But the moment in which they
dropped that bomb was one in which widely accepted principles of public
health had been trampled and buried for the six months before. 

Thus did this plain statement of normal truths come across as shocking.
It wasn’t just what was being said but that actual credentialed academic
professionals would dare to deploy their knowledge and status in service
of truth rather than regime priorities. 

That it was shocking at all tells you all you need to know. 

How to account for this? One explanation is that most intellectuals are
controlled by a secret cabal somewhere in the world that is pulling the
strings. All people in a position of power and influence readily
complied. That explanation is easy but unsatisfying. It is also lacking
in evidence. Whenever I look carefully at people such as Klaus Schwab
and Bill Gates, I see clowns and fools whose wealth massively outstrips
their intelligence. 

I don’t believe they could pull it off. 

There is a better explanation: opportunism. Another word might be
careerism. This particularly applies to journalists and intellectuals.
Their career paths absolutely require compliance with prevailing
narratives. Any deviation could lead to potential doom for them. The
spirit of going along is the driving force of everything they do. 


      Fungibility of Skills 

The word fungibility usually refers to the economic properties of a
good. Something that is fungible is easily and equally converted from
one form to another. Something that is non-fungible is stuck as the
thing it is. A good example is a dollar bill: highly fungible because it
is so easily exchanged to become something else. Far less fungible would
be an oriental rug. You might love it but it is not easily sold at a
price you find fair. 

Things can move from fungible to non-fungible in the course of a market
correction. An example is acoustic pianos. There was a time when
throwing down $15,000 for a piano was an investment. You can sell it for
nearly the same price many years later. 

Then came lighter electronic keyboards. Then several generations were
raised without piano skills. Finally, we all have such easy access to
music in our homes so the piano turned out to lack in utility. Now they
are mostly decorations in hotel lobbies. 

Incredibly, these days, until the piano is very beautiful or rare, it’s
hard even to give them away. Try this out on your own by going to
Facebook Marketplace. You will be amazed at how many pianos are being
given away provided you are willing to pay $500 to move the thing. 


      The Hairstylist 

Professional skills can be ranked according to their fungibility. 

Quick story. A few months ago, I was getting a haircut when the owner of
the shop snapped at the lady cutting my hair. She then said to me:
“That’s it. You are the last customer I will serve in this joint. I’m
quitting.”

Sure enough, as I packed up my things, she packed up hers too. Then she
left. Later she sent me an email that she had taken up a position one
mile down the road. This was made possible because she has a
certification to cut hair and there are always shops around that need a
stylist. She was good to go. 

What that means for her: she will never have to put up with a bad boss.
She can always and everywhere say: take this job and shove it. 

The above scene rarely plays out in a university setting. Every
professor has a title and wants to move from assistant professor to
associate professor to full professor, hopefully gaining tenure along
the way. In order to do that, they must publish in their profession.
That means that they must get through peer review, which is about
quality control only in some fantasy land. It is actually about who you
know and how much they like you. 

At all times, everyone in academia must play the game or else face
career death. It is extremely hard to move from one academic position to
another. You have to pick up and go to another town in another state.
And you have to schmooze the existing faculty. If you develop a bad
reputation as someone who does not get along with others, you could find
yourself blackballed. 

No one who has spent 20 years or longer to gain a credential will take
that risk. 

For this reason, intellectuals, especially in academia, have among the
least fungible skill sets. This is why they hardly ever step out of line. 

The same applies to journalism. It’s a really tough profession. You
start at the local paper writing up crime stories or obituaries, move to
a regional paper with a higher status, and so on. The path is set for
you. The goal is always the same: major reporter on a single topic at
the /New York Times/ or /Wall Street Journal/. They will do nothing to
risk getting off that trajectory because then there is no future. 

This means that they must go along, not because anyone is forcing them
to do so. They do it out of self-interest. This is why you hardly ever
read difficult or unapproved truths in major media outlets. Everyone in
this industry knows that rocking the boat is the worst possible way to
advance in your career. 

All these people hold on to their jobs for dear life. Their biggest fear
is getting fired. Not even a tenured professor is safe. A
passive-aggressive dean can always pile on a burdensome teaching load or
move you to a smaller office. There are ways that colleagues and the
dean can come after you. 

This sets up a terrible reality. The people who are responsible for
shaping the public mind end up as the most craven class of obsequious
simps on the planet earth. We want these people to be brave and
independent — we need them to be — but in practice they are the complete
opposite. 

It’s all because their professions are non-fungible. The same is true of
medical professionals, sadly, which is why so few objected as their own
industry was converted into an instrument of tyranny over three years. 

Think about people who in the last years have been tellers of truth.
Very often, they were retired. They were independent. They had a solid
source of income from family or were wise investors. They wrote for an
independent newsletter or Substack. They don’t have bosses or career
tracts. It’s only these people who are in a position to say what’s true. 

Or maybe they were one of the fortunate few to work for an organization
with a brave boss, brave board, and solid funding sources that would not
withdraw at the slightest sign of trouble. That situation is sadly very
rare. 

The fungibility of professions is a major indicator of whether you can
trust what the person is saying or doing. Those who are only interested
in protecting a paycheck and a single job – clinging to it for dear life
for fear of a future of poverty and homelessness – are compromised. That
pertains to many of what are called “white collar” jobs. This is why you
can trust your hairstylist more than a professor at the local
university. She is free to speak her mind and he is not. 

All of this applies to everyone in government, obviously, but it also
pertains to large corporations, mainstream religions, and central banks
too. The bitter irony is that there doesn’t need to be a conspiracy to
destroy the world. Most people in the position to stop it refuse to step
in simply because they put their professional and financial interests
above the moral obligation to tell the truth. They go along to get along
simply because they have to. 

We should not discount the possibility of genuine confusion here as
well. It’s very possible that legions of intellectuals and journalists
suddenly developed amnesia concerning basic principles of immunology,
public health, or basic morality. Or perhaps this was a case of lost
knowledge
<https://brownstone.org/articles/is-natural-immunity-a-case-of-lost-knowledge/>,
as I’ve observed previously. Still, when there is a professional
interest in suddenly forgetting about human rights, one is prompted to
look for deeper explanations. 

Here is why in our time, as in all times, there is a crying need for
intellectual sanctuaries for those brave souls who are willing to stand
up and be counted, risk cancellation, put their professional careers on
the line, simply to say what is true. They need protection. They need
care. And they deserve our congratulations, for it is they who will
guide us out of this mess. 

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