CHAUTAUQUA–Knowledgeable people from across the spectrum should put their thoughts on the Corona Virus Disease-19, or CoViD-19, pandemic into books that laity can understand.

Dr. Scott Atlas has done that in “A Plague Upon Our House.”

Atlas, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, was in the Trump administration in 2020 and was the July 15 guest of Advocates for Balance at Chautauqua, or ABC.

His book is worth skimming, perusing, reading, or digesting–whichever you have time to do.

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Atlas was one of many bright lights in a presidential term during which you, faithful reader of this column, will recall that the administration would have done well to bring on even more of its own philosophical soulmates for key positions.

No matter who the president is, not bringing on enough philosophical soulmates risks empowering–or leaving empowered–those who aren’t philosophical soulmates.

President Trump 45 would do well to keep that in mind if he becomes President Trump 47.

It’s one thing for his iconic red cap to read both “45” and “47.” It will be another thing to implement “47” ideas. To do that, he’ll need even more philosophical soulmates than he had last time.

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Meanwhile, if you’re looking for a particularly amusing part of Atlas’s book, read what he calls the “Coda.”

It’s an afterword on press coverage of the pandemic.

The coda’s second paragraph aptly introduces the coda’s 22 pages: “A truth-seeking, honest press was always one of the most crucial differences between the United States and countries we proudly stood in distinction from–the USSR, Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba. Thinking through the reality of what we were all told during this pandemic, and how it was crafted by the media, should send chills through every American.”

The American press was “a uniquely unreliable purveyor of information,” Atlas writes. It was “worse than all other English-language news sources.”

“It is undeniable that this was intentional,” he writes. “Regardless of the true motive, it did not serve the public well.”

His joining the Trump administration “created a problem” for those in the biased press, he writes.

“Instead of conflicting with the president’s desire to reopen or undermining him (as did those) who pushed for continued lockdowns, I (cited) scientific evidence that supported reopening schools and businesses. I put forth legitimate data that questioned (others’) orthodoxies,” he writes.

“Under no circumstances would that be permitted to stand,” he writes. “Almost immediately … a coordinated effort began in the mainstream media to discredit me.”

While some in the press “deployed distortions and falsifications,” he writes, others “went on … rants” or “tried to demonize me and my views.”

“What became an even more powerful shock was that medical science and academia were now as broken as the media, undeniably infected with politics and a desire to censor opposing views. The parallels are striking, extending to the tactics of brazen intimidation and cancellation of anyone countering the orthodoxy.”

“Scientists and the media shared the same strategy: seek out and destroy all who dared dissent from the accepted narrative, and delegitimize everything uttered by President Trump and all who agreed with him,” Atlas writes. They “chose to employ smears and organized rebukes against those of us who disagreed with what was implemented and who dared to help the president they despised. One thing was clear–everything President Trump said about the pandemic must be discredited, delegitimized, vilified, and maligned.”

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On its website, https://www.abcatchq.com, ABC posts videos of most of its speakers.

ABC was formed in 2018. Its mission is “to achieve a balance of speakers in a mutually civil and respectful environment consistent with the historic mission of Chautauqua” Institution. ABC is its own Section 501(c)(3) organization, legally separate from the institution.

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Dr. Randy Elf’s Aug. 20, 2020, ABC presentation, on “How Political Speech Law Benefits Politicians and the Rich,” is at https://works.bepress.com/elf/21.

(c) 2024 BY RANDY ELF