The Atlantic is a beautiful magazine, expertly designed and printed, lovely to behold: an excellent showpiece for your coffee table … but marred by absurdities.
Currently, consider David Merritt Johns’s article “MAHA’s Blinkered War on ‘Groupthink’” — and when I shift to reader mode, a second title appears: “In Defense of ‘Groupthink.’”
Of course The Atlantic defends groupthink! It’s been working mightily to shore up totalitarian mob-think, woke half-think, for years!
“More than 1,300 academic papers and dozens of books have been published on” the target concept, groupthink, Mr. Johns explains. “Even after all of this time and effort, the evidence is wanting. In fact, most experts now believe that the old story of groupthink being a prime cause of bad decision making is wrong. Some don’t think that the phenomenon is even real.”
All this is to attack the Make America Healthy Again movement — without ever addressing any (yes, any) actual argument Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has actually made about “the jab” (various innovative coronavirus treatments from Pfizer, Moderna, etc.) in particular or the full panoply of vaccines in the various government-stamped vaccine schedules more generally (much less the disturbing rise, in America, of autism, auto-immune disorders, and obesity).
The entire essay is an elaborate evasion … to defend the thinking of a very large group of tax-paid/regulator-defended professionals.
“Our nation’s thinking isn’t broken,” Johns concludes, “and this administration shouldn’t try to fix it.”
The opposite is true: American political and bureaucratic culture has been corrupt and delusional for decades, at the very least.
And we should all be trying to fix it.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Krea and Firefly
—
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)