One of the great memes of the last decade comes from a 1994 episode of The Simpsons in which Principal Skinner asks, “Am I so out of touch?” and answers, “No, it’s the children who are wrong.” The context is that Bart had skipped school and Skinner tries to find him by first driving to the Museum and then a 4-H club, shocked that neither Bart nor any children were in them. That is when he asks whether he might be out of touch about where children like to go when ditching school and decides, after a fearful moment of introspection, that no, it’s the children who are wrong for not being in the museum or 4-H. The meme became shorthand for people who cling to beliefs after they have been falsified.
That meme has come to mind over the past few days as I watched establishment figures struggle to understand why people across the West are rejecting their policies and views. For the liberal establishment, voters across Europe are voting to close their borders not because migrants commit crimes, depress working-class wages, and strain welfare states but because Elon Musk uses his algorithm to make people angry, racist, and “far right.” People are still angry at Anthony Fauci not because he created the Covid pandemic and then demanded lockdowns whose effects are still being felt, but rather because they are anti-science and/or weak. And governments are not scrapping climate policy because climate scientists lied for decades about everything from rockslides in Nepal to hurricanes to polar bears, and demanded degrowth, but because people are greedy and selfish in their desire for things like air conditioning and automobiles.
