The FAILURES of the Anointed

"[I]n the vision of the anointed, there is obviously a very expansive role for government and for the anointed in prescribing what government should do. ... Characteristic patterns have developed among the the anointed for dealing with the repeated failures of policies based on their vision. ... 

    "This pattern typically has four stages:

"STAGE 1. THE 'CRISIS': Some situation exists, whose negative aspects the anointed propose to eliminate. Such a situation is routinely characterised as a 'crisis' [climate, racism, hate speech, child poverty, children's lunches, smoking rates, microplastics &c.] even though all human situations have negative aspects, and even though evidence is seldom asked or given to show how the situation at hand is either uniquely bad or threatening to get worse. Sometimes the situation described as a 'crisis' has in fact already been getting better for years.
"STAGE 2. THE 'SOLUTION': Policies to end the 'crisis' are advocated by the anointed, who say that these policies will lead to beneficial result A. Critics say that these policies will lead to detrimental result Z. The anointed dismiss these latter claims as absurd and 'simplistic,' if not dishonest. 

"STAGE 3. THE RESULTS: The policies are instituted and lead to detrimental result Z. 

"STAGE 4. THE RESPONSE: Those who attribute detrimental result Z to the policies instituted are dismissed as 'simplistic' for ignoring the 'complexities' involved, as 'many factors' went into determining the outcome. The burden of proof is put on the critics to demonstrate to a certainty that these policies alone were the only possible cause of the worsening that occurred. No burden of proof whatever is put on those who had so confidently predicted improvement. Indeed, it is often asserted that things would have been even worse, were it not for the wonderful programmes that mitigated the inevitable damage from other factors. Examples of this pattern are all too abundant."

~ Thomas Sowell, from his book The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy