How many times in history has the cult-like obsession, groupthink, prevailing view derided the real truth? The world is flat. HIV/AIDS is a heterosexual disease. Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone gunman. The Viet Cong fired on a U.S. ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. Affirmative action would fix race disparities. Educational achievement disparities are a function of race-based discrimination. The Constitution maintains that abortion is a woman’s right. Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Inflation that started in early 2021 was temporary. High oil prices from restrictions on oil production and massive government spending did not cause inflation. COVID came from monkeys at a wet market. Shutdowns and masks and vaccines would stop the spread of COVID. Increased trade with our enemies would secure world peace (Bretton Woods). Equal rights and equal opportunity means equal results.
Experts and their “consensus” opinions have gotten it wrong often. And because of those opinions, many wrong decisions cost Americans tremendous losses in wealth, time, security and happiness.
These five supposed consensus views are about to cost Americans again:
1. “Man’s dependence on oil is the cause of climate change.” This unproven assumption is accepted by so many experts that it is unchallenged and used to justify incredible changes to the American economy and culture. The anti-oil religion has based its entire war on oil on this one assumption when history shows that it has proven to be wrong over and over again in the last 100 years. Ice ages did not happen. The seas did not rise. The predictions in the Al Gore movie did not happen. Polar bears are not extinct. Yet, these cultists continue their assault on one of the most important assets of America: oil, to the destruction of the U.S. economy.
2. “There was no election fraud in the 2020 and 2022 elections.” The media, pundits, some courts and the Department of Justice continue to ignore the questionable impacts of ballot harvesting, unsolicited mailouts of ballots, no voter ID, drop boxes and extended early/late voting, while most other industrial countries have banned all of those practices. How did the U.S. go from voting on the second Tuesday of November to all these other practices that are ripe for abuse? How? Because supposed experts proposed them.
3. “China is our friend.” Because globalist U.S. investors and companies made horrible decisions to invest in China, Americans are suffering from it. Imports. Denial of China impacting our politics and policies. Trade deficits. Spy balloons. Excuses for abuses under communism/socialism. Joe Biden. Hunter Biden. China first instead of America first.
4. “Wokeims, CRT and socialism are good for America.” How did a bogus consensus enable any of this? How did those experts not see how those theories were divisive, destructive, incomplete and wrong? Because they did not want to see it. Groupthink. Liberal groupthink.
5. “Illegal immigration, a low internal birth rate, inflation and trade deficits do not harm America.” What happens when the growth to any population is dependent on immigration and the offspring of those immigrants? Destruction of the incumbent culture. What does inflation do? Makes the rich people richer as the values of assets increase and makes the average workers poorer as wage increases don’t cover inflation. And why are trade deficits so bad? Because they remove capital from the country. Trade deficits are the transfer of wealth from one country to another country. In 2022, under Biden, the U.S. recorded its largest trade deficit in history at almost $1 trillion, or 4% of GDP. Four percent of USA GDP was transferred to foreign countries in just one year. And those experts, pundits, consensus opinion makers do not see how that is bad for the United States Why? Because they have lots invested in those foreign countries. They invested their money, reputations and pride, which are now driving more bad decisions.
It is obvious that consensus, groupthink, cult-like obsession and prevailing views have derided truth that harmed Americans, regarding more than just Alzheimer’s and ulcers. That is the real harm from censorship by the cancel culture each of us must guard against, must stop, must destroy.
Michael Master, Feb. 22 WorldNetDailiy column