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Bay of Pigs Syndrome Is Ascendant
The Bay of Pigs fiasco is often rightly held up as the epitome of groupthink, a fatal organizational defect in which bad news (i.e., anything contrary to the operant narrative) is not permitted to flow up the chain of command. Learning stops. Adaptability diminishes. Sycophants move up the ladder. Failure is sudden, surprising (at least within the organization), and often complete.
Bay of Pigs syndrome (“BPS”) It is not unknown outside of government. Almost any organization that has become too comfortable and set in its ways is vulnerable. The leadership of the American auto industry in the 1970s refused to believe there was a significant market for smaller, more fuel-efficient cars or that Congress would actually impose emissions control requirements. How many companies and industries failed to foresee the impact of the internet even as it unfolded? And organizations that promote only people skilled in appropriations battles or PR campaigns often lose their praxis (as any of you Marxists out there would say) and their readiness to perform the tasks they were created to perform.
With respect to COVID-19, we know with empirical certainty that lockdowns, mask mandates, and silly six-foot stickers on the floor in checkout lines had no effect precisely because the transmission model is grossly incomplete and the Hope-Simpson model (as opposed to Wallensksy’s “impending doom” model) was right all along. Nothing worked and that distressing news does not permeate any CDC policy guidance. Wallensky, et al., are still in a BPS bubble that has cost us all dearly.
As a wired nation, are we playing out BPS as the mode of our entire national mode of information flow? Nothing contrary to whatever is the elite’s preferred paradigm can appear in print, online, or perhaps soon, even in informal direct communication. We have a federal government run by the least mentally competent president in American history whose policies are animated by stale echoes of the administrative state envisioned by Woodrow Wilson and Benito Mussolini, by silly Marxist memes, by unbelievably stupid fiscal policies, and by radically divisive racial politics. And yet, the primary concern and mission of the entire information oligopoly are to characterize the act of noticing these obvious truths as insurrection.
Our governance, economy, military, and education system are all on an ideational suicidal glide path and the authors of our incipient disaster are only interested in shutting off the flow of bad news about that state of affairs. There is a big difference between “spin” and “How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?” but BPS moves inexorably towards the latter, usually until it’s too late.
Published in General
I am beginning to think that the reason masking and restrictions are still so popular is that most of the populace did not get Covid. The thinking now is “See-it worked; not “Maybe the disease wasn’t as contagious as we first thought.”
Too late for whom? Isn’t too late for the Marxist practitioners to succeed in continuing exactly what we should be hoping for?
Often too late for most of them too: Future Rubashovs and Trotskys who don’t know what the revolution has in store for them until the sentencing and execution phase.
I’m beginning to think that the Walking Dead episodes at the CDC wasn’t fiction but reality.
Exactly. “More people would have died if we had not imposed the restrictions.” While this sounds logical at first, the data is catching up and showing this isn’t necessarily true . . .
Our national COVID policy is based on the old joke about the guy who walks into a bar with a huge silly pendant around his neck:
Bartender: What is that you’re wearing?
Guy: An elephant repellent.|
Bartender: There are no elephants around here.
Guy: See, it’s working.
Exactly!
I am certain that all wasted expenses on the “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion” initiatives will do measurable harm to our economy. Careers for some, loss of opportunity for many.
The mission is to eliminate grades and standards administered by teachers who achieved excellence in fields where there are rewards and consequences for actual results. The narrative is building a bubble to wall off reality.
Bathos: The narrative is building a bubble to wall off reality.
Many people who are accustomed to dealing with reality have a tough time grasping this notion because to them society will likely collapse fairly quickly and with devastating results if reality is walled off too long from action.
But what those people don’t realize is that the Klepto-Marxists want the chaos of a societal collapse, because that is when the Klepto-Marxist feel they are at their strongest- when people are the most vulnerable and most easily led down the garden path of the promised strength and security of the Marxist Strong Man State.
Brief, excellent, dead on. We can’t win if we leave them in charge and we can’t replace them without winning an election. How many states could we take if we formed a nation on the US constitution? Depends on the leadership, the clarity of the fraud, and whether the Chinese role is obvious enough.
IBM had this at the start of the PC boom
Good example. Even as the market unfolded right in front of them, they seemed to act as if it was a minor fad and that big computing would always be where the action was. As I recall, they did not even make much of an effort to protect their IP in “micro” computing tech.
There was an instructive debate over the years as to whether Xerox was nuts to give away its lead in computing to Apple and Microsoft. Some MBA types have argued that they were wise to stick with the market they knew. Others (like moi) think it was utterly nuts. As will the Bell Labs giveaway, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates had the foresight to take from people with valuable tech but no foresight themselves.