The 1980s Satanic Panic and Transgenderism Today

Let’s not wait 20 years to come to our senses.

by John Conlin for American Greatness

In the 1980s what now seems like collective insanity hit this country—false reports of satanic sexual abuse of children in daycare. Some called it the Satanic panic. It took almost 20 years for this insanity to be washed out of our collective system.

And it was insane. The following are just some of the claims made during this period: Children were said to have been forced to drink blood, blood-laced Kool-aid, and urine. They also reportedly ate feces and were forced to let animals eat pet food from their vaginas. There were claims they watched people being dismembered with chainsaws. Moreover, rumors of cannibalization and animal mutilation and sacrifice, with body parts used in offerings for Satan were prominent. And of course, there were plenty of stories of watching pornography and sexual abuse of these children.

Daycare abuse cases at that time boasted an 85 percent conviction rate, even as the tales of abuse grew increasingly wild. Any rational person must confess this was a society gone insane. 

The transgender mania that confronts us today is no different. One day society will look back at these times and wonder how such insanity could take root and explode across the country. Chemically mutilating children. Surgically mutilating children. Castrating young boys. Cutting the breasts off young girls. Stripping body parts of skin and muscle to “build” fake penises and vaginas. All because they “believe” they were born in the wrong body. 

These individuals—the vast majority of whom have never had a single sexual experience—are being mutilated on an altar not that different from the one that dominated the Satanic Panic of years back.

The similarities are abundant. There was a great deal of social pressure on children—and adults—to validate and confirm these tales, regardless of how outlandish they were. And once committed, there was even more social pressure to continue the charade. Turning around and saying I made it all up was not an easy thing to do. And thus, most didn’t. They continued the charade to the detriment of themselves and many of those around them.

There quickly sprouted an entire industry of therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, entire government agencies, prosecutors, public schools, doctors and hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, parents, and crazed advocates who pushed this insanity. Most of these with a significant personal interest—both professional and financial—in seeing the insanity continue unabated. 

Theirs was not an attempt to discover the truth and to identify and help whatever victims there may be but rather to encourage and spread the poison. Their goal was an ever-increasing pile of victims who would only reinforce their burgeoning industry.

The Satanic panic created the “Believe the Children” movement. No matter how insane and improbable the claims—and read that list from above, it was insane—their stories must be believed. This is fully mimicked in the supposed explosion of transgender children. Help them mutilate themselves—with abundant coaching from the industry—or they will commit suicide and the blood will be on your hands.

On the transgender front, these kids are forever cash cows as they will be taking expensive drugs—and probably using mental health services—for the rest of their lives.

In 1983 “Dr. Roland Summit publishes an article about Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome, which convinces many therapists and prosecutors that if a child denies that anything happened to him or her, they are hiding the truth.” Read that again. No matter what the child says, unless they support the insanity, they are hiding the truth.

Again, doesn’t this sound just like what is happening with the transgender craze?

The media was fully into spreading both stories. Oprah, Geraldo Rivera, “20/20” and many others did hour-long specials on the terrible, frightening abuses going on around the country—it seemed in dang near every day care out there.

Geraldo finally came to his senses—unfortunately this wasn’t until 1995 after a great deal of damage had already been done.

I want to announce publicly that as a firm believer of the ‘Believe The Children’ movement of the 1980s, that started with the McMartin trials in CA, but NOW I am convinced that I was terribly wrong . . . and many innocent people were convicted and went to prison as a result . . .AND I am equally positive [that the] ‘Repressed Memory Therapy Movement’ is also a bunch of CRAP . . .

The Repressed Memory Therapy Movement drove a lot of the Satanic panic. The therapists, in effect, would convince the children these insane things had been done to them—even though prior to the “therapy” they had had no memory of these activities.

The transgender movement is the same. Here the therapists convince temporarily confused kids—and what adolescent isn’t at least a little confused—that they were born in the wrong body but they can change that and become a totally new, wonderful, and special person just by taking massive amounts of hormones and going under the knife.

May God have mercy on those in the medical profession who have willingly abandoned the first tenant of medicine—first do no harm—because I won’t. These people should be put in prison and one day they will cry for forgiveness for the harm they did.

Following are some quotes from an article on a poor boy—now a man—who was convinced by therapists that his dad had done terrible things to him. Read them and ask yourself if they could not be from today’s transgender industry.

‘When people get emotionally involved in an issue, common sense and reason go out the window. People believe what they want and need to believe.’

‘Whenever I had any doubts that something happened, I was told by the therapist that this was because I had multiple personalities, that my dad had programmed me this way,’ Parker said in the court record of his recantation.

‘I’m still holding on to a lot of guilt over what happened and a little bit of shame that I didn’t realize sooner what had happened to us,’ he said.

As a child, Parker had been called a ‘little hero’ for testifying against his father. He says he battles with guilt today—but has forgiven his now deceased mother.

He said she was clearly mentally ill.

‘Instead of getting help with the real mental problems she was experiencing, she was persuaded and kept mentally ill with pseudoscience and superstition,’ said Parker.

Another child noted, “I lied. It was an ordeal. I remember thinking to myself, ‘I’m not going to get out of here unless I tell them what they want to hear.’”

Not unsurprisingly, all claims were unfounded and eventually quashed, but not before the ritual abuse cases and their alleged victims were paraded in the news media.

Today, the children’s claims are believed to have been false memories planted by parents, law enforcement and therapists.

How is this any different from the transgender craze we see today taking hold of the country?

I will bet any amount of money that the vast majority (all?) of the young children who are discovered to be “transgender” have a mother who has mental health issues. And one who takes great pleasure in the tremendous social accolades that will be bestowed to her. 

But society has a duty to protect these children from this life-altering insanity. Unlike the Satanic panic of the ’80s, let’s not wait 20 years before coming to our senses. The time to end this is now.

X22, And we Know, and more- May 28

 

The Politics of Inertia

The blind trajectory set by Joe Biden’s autopilot just barreled on through, unhindered.

by Roger Kimball for American Greatness

Has something finally intervened to change the 2024 calculus?

“Inertia” is an interesting word. It comes from the Latin iners, which means, first of all, “without skill,” “incompetent” (in, not + ars, art, skill). But it also means “sluggish,” “weak,” “inactive,” “motionless.” In common speech, “inertia” generally suggests something torpid, sleepy, without spunk or initiative. “Joe wanted to go to the race but was overcome by inertia and stayed home.” 

But there is another, more potent sense of “inertia” in common usage. It is implicit in the definition Newton gives in his first law of motion. Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus a viribus impressis cogitur statum illum mutare. “Every body preserves its state of rest or uniform movement in a straight line unless forced to change that state by forces impressed upon it.” 

Newton was thinking of the physical world. But we can observe something similar in the social world and the world of politics. Once a trend or tendency has been achieved, it continues on course until something intervenes to stop or alter its direction. 

Consider the Biden Administration. Once achieved, it lumbered on. Joe Biden’s incontinent glossolalia didn’t matter, nor did his signal failure at the southern border, with energy policy, or with the economy. The communicable mind-virus of wokeness may have reached epidemic proportions in the corporate world, in government agencies, even in the U.S. military, but the blind trajectory set by Biden’s autopilot just barreled on through, unhindered. 

Has something finally intervened to change things? Maybe. In substance, it is just the same thing we’ve seen many times before: allegations about Joe Biden’s involvement with his son Hunter’s shady business dealing. Tucker Carlson, among others, detailed these allegations in technicolor. Back in October 2020—note the date—Carlson interviewed Hunter Biden’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski. It was an extraordinary, and extraordinarily damaging, interview. 

Or so one would have thought. As I noted at the time, Bobulinski “laid out the entire bizarre story of his association with the Bidens, including two face-to-face meetings with Joe Biden in the company of his brother and son.”

Remember, Joe Biden has repeatedly denied ever talking to his son about his business dealings. He knew nothing about it, he said. That seemed highly improbable on its face. Bobulinski shows that it was an outright lie. Two communications stand out. In one, the equity stakes in the new company are broken out. The last item indicates that 10 percent will be held by ‘H’—that’s ‘H’ for Hunter—for ‘the big guy,’ which, along with ‘my Chairman,’ is Hunterese for Joe Biden.

The outcome or upshot? The press seized on the revelations and overnight it became the media sensation of the election season. 

Just kidding! Some commentators attacked Bobulinski as a Russian agent. Mostly, however, the story was studiously ignored where it was not actively buried. A day or two after Tucker Carlson’s blockbuster interview, a search for “Bobulinski” on the CNN site produced a search-not-found result. It still does. How odd.

Nothing Tucker Carlson could do was potent enough to intrude upon the inertia of the Biden Express. 

But that was two and a half years ago, before the election that just had to go Biden’s way. 

Now we’ve had a couple of years of the Big Guy’s stunning incompetence. The Left is still on high alert and will do everything they can—which is a lot—to snatch the election for their candidates. That’s life in the oligarchy today. 

The Democrat will be up against literally Adolf Hitler, whether his given name is Don or Ron, so you can expect the ballot manufacturing turbines to be grinding away on overdrive in their underground bunkers. 

But it is suddenly unclear for whom they will be manufacturing votes. The political weathermen all say “Joe Biden.” But there are many indications that the force field of Biden’s forward-moving inertia has been compromised. Damaging stories are accumulating, and not only in the right-wing press. 

Remember that letter from 51 former intelligence officials insisting that news about Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” was really just Russian disinformation? Their letter provoked Twitter to suspend the account of the New York Post, which broke the story. But it turns out that the letter was agitprop orchestrated by Antony Blinken, then a senior member of Joe Biden’s campaign, now, God help us, secretary of state. 

But now we have the New York Times and even CBS rooting about in the Biden midden. Just a few days ago, CBS interviewed Gary Shapley, a veteran IRS investigator, who detailed how the Justice Department intervened to “slow walk” and otherwise obstruct the agency’s investigation into Hunter Biden’s alleged tax fraud. Other outlets are casting a gimlet eye on reports that the Bidens, while Big Guy Joe was vice president, hoovered up more than $10 million from the companies of various foreign nationals. 

Recalling the effect of Walter Cronkite’s critical report on the course of the Vietnam War in 1968—it was widely credited with forcing Lyndon Johnson out of the race for president—one commentator wonders whether the CBS report might have a similar effect on Joe Biden, forcing him from the 2024 race. “Now,” the report speculates, “the country could be witnessing a similar watershed moment as CBS signals its willingness to treat the Biden family’s corruption with the scrutiny it deserves.”

It is still too soon to say for sure, but I do sense a distinct change in the inertial forces that propel our political narrative forward. Perhaps, as that report goes on to suggest, “CBS’s coverage of the story signals the liberal media’s willful ignorance of the president’s corruption scandals could be coming to an end.” If so, “that’s bad news for Biden, who has relied on the silence of the media to hide the growing mound of evidence pointing to his involvement in Hunter’s schemes.”

None of that, I think, will help the Republican, whether his name starts with an “R” or a “D,” but it might well alter the fortunes of the senescent man in the White House today. 

Here's What Happened in the Past 15 Years That Flipped the Social, Cultural, Media, Leftist and Govt Relationship

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse 

Last night I participated in a conversation. This article is written as an outcome of that conversation, as requested by those who participated.

Essentially, the framework of the conversation, as I initially listened, is best described as a series of questions amid a group of smart intellectual types who are very understanding of the nature of our current situation.

In various forms they were asking each other the same question.  What happened in the last several years that caused Democrats, leftists and the traditional political left to switch positions on their advocacy?

Liberalism literally went from railing against Big Govt, to embracing corrupt Big Govt. Why and how did this happen?

In short, it was the same line of questioning I have seen asked by Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald, Tulsi Gabbard and various traditionally liberal people as well as people on the right side of the continuum.

Why and how did traditional liberalism so suddenly flip from being, big picture – ‘anti-government’, to suddenly embracing corrupt government enterprise, and supporting the intelligence apparatus, federal govt (writ large), institutional oppressive law enforcement and FBI etc.?  What happened?

After listening to this conversation quietly, as I am prone to do, my remarks -with citations and examples- silenced the room.

At the conclusion of my remarks, everyone asked me if I had ever written about this, and if not – why not?   I did not have an answer, so consider this a promise fulfilled.  Perhaps you might find value.

In the 50 years that preceded 2008, traditional leftists, media activists, left-wing community organizing agencies, Democrats, liberals, progressives, or whatever label you want to assign, essentially railed against the U.S. government and all that it represented.  However, now, if you were to look at the issues from the 30,000-foot perspective, those same groups currently support the oppressive & weaponized system of government they formerly despised.

In the 50 years that preceded 2008, those same groups had an approach of distrust toward government, and the media apparatus had a very distinct supportive and cynical outlook, favorable to the leftist anti-government perspective.  Now, all of that has reversed – seemingly flipped.

In the 50 years that preceded 2008, media pushed a one-way narrative in defense of those who were “targeted” by the institutions and mechanisms of government.  As the activists railed against the regime, the media framed narratives to excuse the transparently guilty. Now, that entire dynamic has reversed.  Now we see the media pushing a narrative in support of weaponized government targeting, and – here’s the kicker – framing the transparently innocent.

The activists went from accusing government of wrongdoing and defending the transparently guilty – to aligning with government, excusing government wrongdoing, and helping to attack the transparently innocent.

As some continue to say with jaw agape, WTF happened?

The answer “why” is not complicated…. not complicated at all.

In 2008, the ‘activists’ took control of government.

In January of 2009, the leftists, community organizers and activists took control of the systems they had opposed for the preceding 50+ years.

In January of 2009, and inflection point took place; an inflection point that no one realized in forethought, scale or consequence.

Starting in 2009, all of the systems of federal government were now under the control of the people who previously fought against the systems of federal government.  Everything since is an outcome of that inflection point; that’s why everything flipped.

All of it, and I do mean every scintilla of the thing; every single granular detail and example you can put in front of me can be traced back to that moment when the activists were no longer outside government railing against the corrupt system they hated.

Starting in January of 2009, the activists took power over the United States government, and every outside institution, including media, necessarily and ideologically followed that inversion.

Starting in 2009, the systems and institutions of the U.S government now came under the control of the radical activists.

In the eight years that followed, the mission of every institution was changed.  Government was weaponized on behalf of the leftist activists who now took control of it.  Everything thereafter is a consequence of this change.

When I use the word “suddenly”, it is only for understanding the inflections point that came as a consequence.  In actuality, the severity of change inside each institution took place over several years.  That’s why the intensity of the weaponized and corrupt systems became worse over time.

As each institution was infiltrated to become more aligned with the mindset of the activists, the institutions became more radical in their targeting and weaponization.

The activists went from being outside government to being inside government.

Suddenly, the left-wing supportive media changed mission priority from railing against corrupt government, to defending the corrupt weaponization of govt.

Suddenly, the FBI went from targeting domestic threats, to targeting only the domestic threats defined as against the interests of the left-wing activists.

Suddenly, the outside activists went from being defined as social elements creating turmoil, to social elements now being defended and even promoted.

This is why we see outside activist groups like the Dream Defenders, New Black Panthers, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street and more recently ANTIFA, as protected and supported by the activists inside government now in control of the systems and institutions.

All of the social, cultural and political dynamics that changed traditional “liberalism” are easily understood once you realize and accept that activists took control of the power centers of the U.S. government.

Everything that followed, including our current state of social and political turmoil, is simply a natural conclusion of that fundamental change.

The radical activists are now in control of the institutions of power.  This core shift is what created the dynamic of a very visible two-tiered justice system.  Each institution was weaponized and continues to be weaponized against those who are not aligned with the activist ideology.

The Dept of Justice has been weaponized against people who are not in alignment with the radicals.

The federal police, known as the FBI, have been weaponized against We The People.

The Intelligence Community is now under the control of the radical activists.  The mission priorities change accordingly.

When Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald, Tulsi Gabbard or any other person posits the question about ‘why’ the ideology of the left and media has shifted so suddenly, there is your answer.

It is not a complicated understanding.   Once you accept this fundamental change took place, everything seemingly falls into place….

…. At least that’s what the “ah-ha” audience told me.

New York City Mayor Makes Obesity A Protected Class

Tristan Justice reporting for The Federalist 

New York City Mayor Eric Adams signed a bill Friday declaring obesity a new legally protected class.

The legislation signed by the New York mayor bars individuals from being discriminated against for their height and weight for access to employment or public housing.

“It shouldn’t matter how tall you are or how much you weigh when you’re looking for a job, are out on the town, or trying to rent an apartment,” Adams said at the Friday signing ceremony. “No one should ever be discriminated against based on their height and weight. We all deserve the same access to employment, housing, and public accommodations, regardless of our appearance.”

Incidents of weight discrimination will be investigated by the New York City Commission on Human Rights.

New York City Republican City Councilman Joseph Borelli warned in April the new law will “empower people to sue anyone and everything.”

“I’m overweight, but I’m not a victim,” Borelli told the New York Times in April. “No one should feel bad for me except for my struggling shirt buttons.”

The mayor’s latest legislation illustrates another hallmark example where public policy follows culture. Obesity had already become a protected class under the hierarchy of oppression outlined by left-wing social justice standards for years. In January, TIME Magazine stigmatized exercise as white supremacist four months after Lizzo, an icon of the pro-fat movement disguised as “body positivity,” railed against “oppression” at the Video Music Awards. But if Lizzo were a true crusader for social justice, she’d blast the food industry for driving the weight epidemic today, wherein black Americans have the highest prevalence of obesity.

[READ: Is Lizzo Really Oppressed, Or Is She An Oppressor?]

In her book, “You Have the Right to Remain Fat,” San Francisco author and activist Virgie Tovar describes fat people as the ultimate victims.

“In our culture, fat people are used to scapegoat anxieties about excess, immorality, and an uncontained relationship to desire and consumption,” Tovar writes, and describes “fatphobia” as the “new language of classism and racism.”

“It is no accident that fat people are underrepresented in the workplace, academia, and mass media,” Tovar added.

As obesity trends rise, however, so does the number of people with disabilities, unable to perform tasks critical to jobs with physical demands.

Overweight airline passengers have also begun circulating online petitions to mandate airlines offer free seats and bigger bathrooms to accommodate obese travelers. In 2021, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was already compelled to update weight guidelines for aircraft to take into account heavier passengers with heavier luggage than when safety standards were last updated in 2005.

Indian Official Suspended for Some Reason After Draining Entire Reservoir Just to Retrieve His Phone

Joe Cunningham reporting for RedState 

Have you ever dropped your phone while taking a selfie? It sucks, and you’re silently thinking “Oh God please don’t be broken” the entire time you’re looking for it. Eventually, if you manage to retrieve it, you are thankful and vow to never drop it again – a vow you keep for maybe a couple of months until you drop it again while scrambling to silence it during a meeting.

Some folks, though, just count their losses and move on. Maybe they get another phone, maybe they just go off the grid. Whatever the case may be, they don’t freak out if they lose their phone.

But some folks are Rajesh Vishwas, a government official in India who went above and beyond to get his lost phone.

While taking a selfie at the Kherkatta Dam, located in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, Vishwas dropped his phone. It promptly fell into the reservoir, and since it was an expensive Samsung (roughly $1,200 U.S. dollars), he couldn’t go without it.

After local divers failed to find it, he paid for a diesel pump to be brought in, Mr Vishwas said in a video statement quoted in Indian media.

He said he had verbal permission from an official to drain “some water into a nearby canal”, adding that the official said it “would in fact benefit the farmers who would have more water”.

The pump ran for several days, emptying out roughly two million litres (440,000 gallons) of water – reportedly enough to irrigate 6 sq km (600 hectares) of farmland.

His mission was stopped when another official, from the water resource department, arrived following a complaint.

Vishwas has been suspended from his duties while an inquiry is underway. He claims he did not cause any harm because the water was in the overflow portion of the reservoir and was unusable water. The government seems to not care as government equipment was brought in to engage in a major and expensive project solely to retrieve the phone.

Which, by the way, was too soaked to work any longer.

It should be noted that anyone with any concept of how phones work would know that even the most water-resistant phones won’t work if submerged deep underwater for days. It should also be noted that his claim that the phone had “sensitive government data” wouldn’t mean much if the phone was too soaked to use.

This could be a simple case of a government official using all of the power given to him to complete a meaningless task. Bureaucracies gonna bureaucracy, and all that. But the panicked response of hiring divers and then draining the entire damn reservoir makes me think something way funnier is at play, like a government official so desperate to keep an affair hidden that he is willing to abuse his power to get a water-logged phone back.

That may not be the case at all, and this guy is just not bright, but man, that would be hilarious, and I kind of hope that’s the case.

Erdogan thanks voters and claims win

 Erdogan began his address by singing to the crowd. Speaking from the top of a campaign bus, he thanked voters and said they had given him responsibility to rule Turkey for another five years.  

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-65686238

Scott Atlas Heckled At College Commencement Ceremony For Dealing Harsh Truths About Covid

Atlas was booed as he encouraged the audience to save their country by committing themselves to the truth.

Auguste Meyrat reporting for The Federalist

No other event in recent memory exposed the hypocrisy, stupidity, and danger of the leftist elites like the Covid-19 pandemic. Nearly everything that was said and done concerning Covid was utter misinformation: lockdowns, ventilators, masks, “vaccines,” social distancing, the origins of the virus. And yet, these things were pushed hard for the next few years (Biden only ended his Covid national emergency last month) while dissenters were routinely marginalized and silenced.

But when it comes to reflecting on the virus, the left continues to deny, denounce, and disinform. Such was the case when Dr. Scott Atlas recently delivered a commencement speech at New College of Florida. After recounting the vitriol and character attacks he endured as an adviser to President Trump, Atlas lamented the damage done by political leaders and scientific authorities:

Under two administrations — Trump and Biden — the United States’ management of the pandemic was a failure, in deaths per million among the worst compared to all our peer nations — a straight line of increase in deaths per day, from March 1, 2020, through April 2022 — two full years, no change in the slope of that line even after the vaccine becoming available on Dec. 16, 2020.

Such brutal honesty drew loud boos from the crowd. Toward the end of the speech, students eventually drowned out Atlas, shouting, “Wrap it up!” Ironically, this happened as Atlas encouraged his audience to save their country by committing themselves to the truth:

We desperately need leadership that unites, not divides; leaders with a moral compass, who know right from wrong, who believe in strong family values; leaders who are not afraid to defend our precious freedoms — America’s hard-earned freedoms that uniquely provide opportunity sought by millions the world over; leaders with integrity — or this country, as an ethical society, as a virtuous society, as a free and diverse society, is in serious trouble.

Considering that nothing in Atlas’ speech was false or overtly partisan, it’s difficult to know what exactly the hecklers were upset about. Freedom? Responsible leaders? Ethics? Unity? Could it really be all these things? Unfortunately, for a large portion of today’s graduates, it really is all these things. 

While the coddling of today’s youths has been many years in the making, Covid policies made this problem so much worse. High schoolers and college students were subjected to constant media gaslighting that convinced them they and their family members would die if they didn’t keep away from other people and wear masks. They were told that learning remotely from their bedroom was entirely normal and that they should always trust the experts. Even when a few brave people like Atlas told the truth, they saw those people get canceled for spreading supposed falsehoods and putting lives at risk.

More importantly, this messaging hit young people in their most formative years. They didn’t just witness a propaganda campaign come and go. Instead, day after day, they absorbed and internalized it because it was everywhere all the time. Consequently, even when the lockdowns and mask bans were lifted and Covid jabs were made optional, many of them clung to the habits that developed in the previous years. Even if it’s absolutely necessary now for them to know the truth about the pandemic, it feels absolutely awful. Not only was everything told to them not true, but those stolen years have turned so many of them into helpless introverts who lack the capacity to cope with basic reality.

It’s quite telling that an alternate commencement ceremony took place at the same time as the one where Atlas spoke. The speaker of the ceremony was Maya Wiley, “president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights,” who assured her audience of proud LGBT students, “You’re speaking up to the dozens of states that are now copy-catting the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law.” Doubtless, this was much more affirming and nice to hear than being told to fight for truth and freedom.

Nevertheless, even though this is what they want to hear, this isn’t what they need to hear. The path of blissful ignorance and divisive identity politics is not sustainable at this point, much less reasonable. As it happens, few individuals understand this better than Atlas himself. Like Robin Williams’ therapist in “Good Will Hunting” repeating to Matt Damon’s Will Hunting, “It’s not your fault,” Atlas does effectively the same thing in his commencement speech. And just like Will pushing back against these words before breaking down into sobs, Atlas’s audience rejected his words, holding back some heavy feelings. Before they can move forward, they need to acknowledge that it wasn’t their fault that everything went so wrong and so many people suffered.

But they also need to recognize that it will become their fault if they refuse to learn from the mistakes made. Since it’s unlikely that any leaders who botched the Covid response will apologize or admit failure, as Atlas calls for, it falls to upcoming graduates to “learn the facts, use critical thinking, and then form the opinion,” and finally move past the deception and obfuscations. In all fairness, it’s a heavy burden, but one that grows lighter and more pleasant with practice and maturity.