2020 vision just like 1995 vision

I am 25 years late reading Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Anointed (1995), yet his main points could have been written yesterday. That's because what he terms the "vision of the anointed" hasn't changed, not just since 1995 but for hundreds of years.

By anointed he means those people — mostly in government, academia, the arts and the media — who consider themselves not just smarter than the common rabble but on a higher moral plane, as well. Those who disagree with them, Sowell writes, "are seen as being not merely in error, but in sin." If you disagree with them you are not just wrong, but evil.

Thus democracy, in which their votes count no more than those of ordinary people, is viewed as an error in need of correction. To accomplish this requires a crisis of some kind. Almost anything will do — a pandemic, climate change, racism, poverty, forest fires, whatever happens to be handy.

Often, Sowell points out, problems are already in the process of correction when the anointed identifies them as crises. Then they advocate corrective measures that tend to make these problems worse, not better. Powell mentions Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, which came at a time when poverty in the United States was shrinking. The Great Society programs led to significantly more poverty, a trend that continues to this day. More recently the furor over racism in the country came at a point when racism was less evident than at any time in history.

Despite their presumption of intellectual superiority, both facts and logic mean little to the anointed, Sowell says. In today's world, the anointed preach the importance of following science, while ignoring any science that conflicts with their vision.

Sowell says the anointed speak of solutions, while more sensible people speak of trade-offs. Attempting to correct one problem can cause another, something the anointed refuse to accept. Any new problems just create new crises for the anointed, in their wisdom, to solve. And something new to blame on somebody else.

The anointed, the author writes, focus on what he calls mascots and targets. The mascots are those, such as women, blacks or transexuals, whom the anointed choose to patronize, while the targets are those they choose to blame.

Perhaps the statement Sowell makes in 1995 that most sounds like it could have been written in 2020 is this one: "Those who have most consistently undermined the police and other elements of law enforcement are among those most shocked by the escalation of crime and violence."