Question Authority, Revisited
28th August 2024
If you’re of a certain age, like I am, you probably remember those bumper stickers that exhorted us all to Question Authority. It was the mark of a thinking person not to take everything at face value, in particular the words of the government or government agencies.
I remember once going to an SDS meeting when I was in college. I was never a leftist but I suppose I was toying with it a bit at the time (this was during the Vietnam War). But what I saw and heard at that meeting repelled me on a gut level and I never went back. That one meeting cured me of any interest in taking the left as an authority on anything, except their angry, ranting, incoherent, narcissistic selves.
I wish I could remember what was said, but I don’t. I only remember the sense I had of dangerous people who were also stupid, and yet very very arrogant. That just about summed it up.