Tribal Trust

It is peculiar that many of the same right-wing critics who say we shouldn’t trust Bill Gates because he is a billionaire also told us that we should trust Donald Trump because he is a billionaire.

…

Bill Gates must be plotting something, they say. Why? Because Bill Gates must be plotting something. Why? Because he is Bill Gates.

And it’s turtles all the way down.

Think of it in this context: Led in no small part by Republicans, the United States turned itself upside-down and inside-out over 3,000 deaths in a terrorist attack in 2001. We have been seeing more than 3,000 COVID deaths daily for a while now.

But one bankrupted cosmetologist is a tragedy — 300,000 dead Americans is a statistic.

Kevin D. Williamson, Tribal Authority: We Worship Power When Our Tribe Wields It