STEVEN SPIELBERG AND THE OTHER UNSMART CORONAMANIACS

In America, being perceived as smart confers social status. Nearly everyone sees themselves as smart. Those who think they’re smart want to control those whom they view as less smart. Many want to be governed by those whom they perceive as smart. Nonetheless, Joe Biden is President. And most governors and all living ex-presidents shilled for the jabs.

How can we determine who’s truly smart?

One way is to stage a public health emergency and see how people react. During the past three years, tens of millions of people—many of whom had college degrees—have demonstrated that they were very unsmart by aggressively supporting lockdowns, school closures, mass asymptomatic testing and mask and “vaccine” mandates. These measures were all downside, with no upside. The failure of, and damage caused by, each was plainly foreseeable.

Many who opposed the extreme Covid overreaction have said that they knew some smart people who fell for the craziness.

Yesterday, for example, I heard two radio talk show hosts discuss Steven Spielberg’s reaction to Covid. They postulated that Spielberg is very smart because many people have paid to watch his movies. Then they played an audio clip in which Spielberg said, when 250,000 people were said to have died of Covid, he thought Covid was “an extinction level event.” Using wildly overstated, official death figures, the US is said to have crossed the 250,000 death threshold in mid-November, 2020.

Beyond not knowing that this death toll was phony and the PCR test upon which it was based delivered 90% false positives, didn’t Spielberg know that America has well over 330,000,000 people and that even 250,000 is only 0.07% of 330,000,000? Didn’t he see that nearly all said to have died from—but really with Covid, were already very old and sick? Didn’t he know that, by November, 2020, tens of millions of people had survived infection, most of them exhibiting only mild symptoms or no symptoms at all? Did he know that America’s population was actually growing at that time, as it has throughout the Scamdemic? How many people did he personally know who were said to have died of Covid between March-November, 2020? I suspect zero.

Where was the threat of extinction?

Given Spielberg’s unawareness of basic facts or science, his poor logic and his failure to compare media coverage of “The Pandemic” to his own, direct observations of the world, how smart can he—or those who shared his doomsday view—be?

Throughout the Scamdemic, many people have exhibited Spielberg’s ignorance of central facts and biology, as well as his innumeracy, illogic and disregard for observed reality. I don’t care how much money someone has, how many degrees s/he holds (or from which universities), if s/he can speak six languages, play multiple piano concertos from memory and solve Rubik’s Cube in five seconds; those who viewed Covid as scary to anyone but a very small, identifiable slice of the population and who supported the various, unprecedented and extreme governmental “mitigation” measures have shown that they’re not smart. None of this talismanic theater could possibly have worked.

Our society has poor criteria for awarding its smart badges.

Initially, being considered smart often entails the willingness to share the view of the smartness evaluator. Toward the end of one college semester, I submitted an assigned essay to my History professor. I had liberally—word choice intentional—sprinkled my paper with themes the prof had expressed in lectures. When he returned that paper in that pre-grade inflation era, the prof gave me an “A.” In red ink below the grade, he wryly followed several other sentences of comments by concluding that “You can never go wrong echoing a professor's view.”

Most students know that they’ll be rewarded for agreeing with teachers and succumb to that incentive. Our culture purports to value critical thinking. But independent thought is actively discouraged, even in/especially in academic settings.

Peer pressure also strongly influences peoples’ views on public issues. In order to make and keep friends, many people suspend inquiry and reason and assimilate the views of those with whom they want to hang out. According to a recent poll, most college-indoctrinated young women say they won’t date males who don’t toe the PC line; Lysistrata, 2022 edition.

Combining institutional and peer pressure to compel conformity and obedience is highly effective, but often destructive. The Asch, Milgram and Stanford Prison Experiments, plus the experiences of the past 35 months, bear this out.

Academic pedigree is another overrated indicator of intelligence. Political conformity is built into the college admissions process. Universities examine applicants’ organizational affiliations. Applications also include essays that allow colleges to evaluate prospective students’ ideological leanings. Demographics, sports involvement and affluence also strongly influence both admission enrollment decisions. Consequently, college selection is an attenuated meritocracy, skewed by politically correctness. Those who aren’t PC when they arrive at college are subjected to re-education by ideologically monolithic faculties.

No matter where US News and World Report ranks a university, should anyone be impressed by any “institution of higher learning” that closed its doors to, and later masked, 18-25 year-olds who were at functionally zero risk from a respiratory virus? Why should anyone respect the intellect of any college administrator who not only mandated experimental injections for a virus that never threatened 18-25 year-olds but still requires students to take “boosters,” despite that the mRNA jabs clearly don’t stop either infection or spread? And what does meek acceptance of clearly counter-science university “vaxx” edicts say about the analytical ability and character of the students at such places?

The past three years have more fully revealed that those who run and attend colleges—especially the “prestigious” ones—are dogmatic, virtue-signaling conformists, who lack basic discernment and who, respectively, teach and internalize a broadly PC hidden curriculum, including Med/Pharma orthodoxy. The college crowd believed the NY Times’ Covid narrative, even though it made no sense. There’s none so blind as s/he who will not see.

Similarly, workplace hierarchy may also fail to correlate with intelligence. Connections and workplace gamesmanship strongly affect career trajectory. While the archetypal Yes-Man is much mocked, his behavior often yields positive results. Demographics and the ability to navigate office culture can more strongly influence promotion than does knowledge, skill and/or hard work.

According to RFK Jr.’s portrayal of Anthony Fauci, this latter, gnomish individual excelled at gaming the government employment system. He wasn’t nearly as good at doing his job or serving the public. Hence, it’s not surprising that someone who was labeled “America’s Top Infectious Disease Expert” has been consistently wrong for the past three years; deemed smart, but not smart.

Any objective, thinking person who listened to Fauci, his bureaucratic colleagues or various governors or mayors during the Scamdemic heard a steady flow of obvious blather and lies. I’ve previously posted long lists of examples. For now, recall that these “experts” insisted that the mRNA injections were safe and would stop infection and spread. There’s no denying that they said this; it’s captured on video.

In three years, I’ve never heard an ostensible journalist ask any of these bureaucrats or politicians a hard question. The bureaucrats and politicians resolutely avoided anyone who might have done so. They resembled the Wizard of Oz; they had lofty titles but hid behind a curtain and spoke nonsense. Nonetheless, legions of the gullible insisted that these credentialed charlatans were smart. They obeyed and recited the official foolishness, as if they were Maoists or robots. “My mask protects you,” etc. became articles of faith.

Though maybe the bureaucrats, governors and mayors weren’t as stupid as they sounded. More likely, they knowingly and cynically lied because they knew the public was gullible and they saw political and economic opportunity in mendacity. Sadly, many would consider calling these Scamdemic orchestrators “opportunistic, power-hungry liars” a more favorable characterization than is labeling them “stupid.”

Using Spielberg as an example of a smart person who fell for the Scam illustrates another dark force, beyond political tribalism and simple-mindedness, that drove the Covid overreaction. Spielberg’s career, like that of most moviemakers—both Hollywood and documentary—entails concocting, misrepresenting or dramatizing events to create a more compelling story. Exaggeration and catastrophe are filmmakers’ stock and trade. They consider reality unacceptably unremarkable.

Crisis films have large, eager audiences. Because they’ve watched too many such movies, or just have baseline anxiety, filmgoers worry that the real world is always on the brink of some disaster or other and that only the government, superheroes, superweapons, superdoctors or now, supermasks or superjabs can save them.

A fretful mindset severely compromises peoples’ ability to understand life. Specifically, it caused them to overreact badly to a respiratory virus. Jackson Browne sang, “There’s a world of illusion and fantasy in the place where the real world belongs.” Yet, pro-lockdown/pro-vaxx Browne is one of legions of “liberal” authoritarian Coronamania exponents whose illusions prompted them to buy full-event passes to three years of FearFest.

How could those who thought they were smart have gotten the past three years so completely wrong? Easy. They weren’t smart. They only had academic credentials that connoted smartness. They claimed to know the facts and “The Science,” but didn’t. They exalted “the experts,” who got everything wrong. They were—as they long have been—groupthinkers, terrified of disagreeing with the media narrative or their peers. Their bias and fear prevented them from seeing the truth. And their failure to see the truth made them afraid.

Over the past three years, applied critical thinking was needed more than ever. Unfortunately, most Americans—including many with abundant formal education— showed that they had become unaccustomed to this practice and thus, were incapable of informed, independent, holistic analysis. Instead, they narrow-mindedly and emotionally ran with their demagogic, Democrat tribe/mob.

The Coronamaniacs could scarcely have been more oppressive, wrong and destructive. Chastened, they should stand down, remain humble for life and allow those who smartly opposed the Covid overreaction to make public policy.