For many years, we have kept the door labeled "CAUTION: RABID BATS" tightly shut. We have not sprinkled our avocado toast with tiny pellets of lead, and have dissuaded children from becoming chimney sweeps. We have refrained from swaddling our infants in asbestos, and we have meticulously and often at great inconvenience to ourselves avoided touching live electrical wires.
We do not pick things up off the floors of abattoirs and eat them. We never put metal into the microwave. We avoid staring directly at the sun. We vaccinate children against measles. We have food inspectors to inspect food and require security clearances for access to classified information. We have had a Federal Reserve that was composed of people capable of telling the difference between inflation and deflation and who did not want to bring back the gold standard. We have had, for lack of a better word, nice things.
Are we not tired of such dull, in-the-box thinking dictated by elites who claim to possess specialized knowledge about the way things work? Have we considered that it might actually be a very pleasant experience to lose a hand to a leopard? I am sick of being told my opinion does not count because I am not an expert and think it might make the leopard loyal and grateful. How do we know that rabid bats are bad? Have you ever really seen a rabid bat? Can bats even get rabies?
That is why I am putting Herman Cain on the board of the Federal Reserve! That is why I am putting Stephen Moore on the board of the Federal Reserve. That is why, soon, I will be putting my horse Incitatus on the board of the Federal Reserve. To shake things up.
Economic adviser Larry Kudlow has described Moore as "a breath of fresh air in the Fed." He is right. Fresh ideas! Thoughts that so-called experts have spent decades discarding! Ideas so unconventional that, when you recount them to the "elites" who have spent their lives studying a given subject area, they tear out large handfuls of their hair and begin sobbing as though heartbroken.
For too long, we have been constrained by an approach that is ... good, but maybe we should try one that is ... bad. We should hear both sides. For too long, we have urged people to make arguments based on actual observable facts that are true. But have we tried also basing arguments on non-observable non-facts that aren't true? The president gazed into the sun and nothing too bad happened, except his father's birthplace moved to Germany and he has discovered that the noise of windmills can cause cancer. Which might be!
We have been trapped in one way of doing things for too long. Always putting on our spacesuits before leaving the shuttle. Only reaching into the garbage disposal when it was turned off. Demanding to see presidential candidates' tax returns. Have we considered doing things differently? Why are we so constrained?
Try this new method! Doctors hate it! It makes doctors weep with fury! Doctors scream, "Do not waste your money on this trickery!" And that's just what doctors WOULD say.
Relatedly, it looks as though the pork industry will soon be responsible for inspecting itself. Oh, look how mad the elites are! They shout, "Have you not read 'The Jungle'?" No, I have not. And I am proud of that fact.
I love to enrage the elites and defy conventional wisdom by dipping my child in mercury. I scoff in the face of such "wisdom." I am sending this camel to your bedside; he is your health care now. Here is an old pirate with a hook for a hand; he is the new National Education Association. This half-bear, half-demon from the darkest reaches of the Arctic where the sun scarcely penetrates is going to be your child's new day-care provider.
Look how their faces contort! Look how silly the elites look when they shout, "Do not put the rabid bats in charge of the Ninth Circuit!" "That lemur is not a paramedic!" "Do not unplug that, that will kill you!"
Imagine ever looking that silly! Now let's hear what those bats have to say.
Alexandra Petri | The Washington Post
Alexandra Petri is a Washington Post columnist offering a lighter take on the news and opinions of the day. She is the author of “A Field Guide to Awkward Silences.”
