What happened to ‘the adults in the room?’

Some still exist, but they are now labeled dangerous, ignorant children.

Atticus Finch would qualify as an “adult in the room.” That’s why town fathers in fictional Maycomb, Ala. asked him to defend a client who needed a brave advocate. IMO we had more “adults in the room” in the 1930s, ‘40s, ‘50s, etc. But by 2020, in a dizzying blur, 99 percent of adults simultaneously abdicated this responsibility.

Regarding the litany of illusions I once possessed that have been shattered in our New Normal Covid times, the most depressing for me has been my former belief that the world featured many “adults in the room” who could make things right.

I’ve now learned this is not so. 

As I’ll document in this article, such adults still exist. However, in our New Normal times this dwindling number of sane, competent and principled people are increasingly ignored and thus have been unable to make things right (despite heroic efforts to achieve this result.)

Many readers are probably like me. Going back to our childhoods, when something bad or unfair happened in our lives - something that really bothered us -we all knew adults who would listen to us and could actually fix these things.

Our parents would be the best examples. My late mother and father bailed me out of crisis after crisis. Or when someone did “do me wrong,” my parents could take care of that person or at least provide some kind of psychological tonic that made me feel better.

In school, there were always trusted teachers, principals or coaches who could listen to a credible grievance and then dispense real justice or fix the transgression.

In our hometowns, when a trend was obviously going sideways, some civic or business leader(s) could usually take charge, fix the problem, and, in effect say, “Don’t worry about this. I’ll take care of it.” And they could and did. 

That was then; this is now …

Skip forward to early 2020. By this point in my life, I’d become far more jaded and cynical about the world, but even in my early 50s, I still thought some “adults in the room” would come forward and rescue the world.

Just like when I was a child, I thought all good people had to do was point out some injustice or clearly bogus facts and the cavalry would ride in and avert the crisis and stop the Bad Guys in their tracks.

Boy was I wrong. Not only did all the would-be heroes disappear, they disappeared in a flash. (Here the theme of the classic Western “High Noon” comes to mind, which makes me think my view of human nature might have always been naive).

The adults weren’t serving in these institutions …

So who were some of the “adults in the room” I thought might step forward and take charge when we needed them most? This list might be endless. 

Surely, I thought, with thousands of newspapers, magazines, Internet sites and TV networks, at least a few of these “watchdog” organizations would include editors and owners who had the resources and intelligence to abort our collective journey into madness before it took too many steps down the Road to Ruin.

Wrong.

My respect for politicians was not great, but the world is full of elected officials so surely a few of them must have been real statesmen who possessed the persuasive skills to say, “Wait a minute here.”

Wrong.

According to opinion polls, doctors are the “most trusted” profession in the world so some prominent doctors’ groups would surely step up and say, “First do no harm.” 

Wrong again.

America has more than 5,000 colleges and junior colleges. These bastions of “higher learning” and “truth-seeking” institutions would be full of presidents and esteemed professors who would use their academic pedestals to at least say, “The science is not settled; let’s be careful here …”

If one thought this, he needs to go back to “Real-World” Class.

“Fearless” plaintiffs’ trial lawyers, some scientists who still believed in the Scientific Method, even brave “social-justice” entertainers always champing at the bit to stand up to “The Man” would probably come forward, launch a protest movement, and take on a leadership role, I thought.

Well, I thought wrong. 

(A massive convoy of independent truck drivers in Canada tried to play this role. Alas, we all know what happened to that budding protest movement - it was nipped in the bud with one ruthless two-day crackdown).

The world has thousands of mega corporations, all led by supposedly brilliant people who are not afraid to exert real leadership … Certainly, a few of these business leaders would step up, I thought. 

Didn’t happen.

Even the Mom-and-Pop business leaders, the local bank presidents and all the local Rotary and Kiwanis Club presidents decided to support The (FUBAR) Current Thing.

And don’t get me started on the “religious community” and this community’s “leaders.”

“And then depression sets in ….”

It took me just a couple of weeks in late March 2020 to reach this illusion-shattering revelation: “Bill, the cavalry ain’t coming. You are on your own here.” Also, my mother’s no longer alive and, even if she was, she’d be powerless to do anything to help.

Which brings me to Point 2 of this essay: Even if people who hadn’t drunk the Covid Kool Aid tried to do “our part,” our efforts weren’t going to amount to a hill of beans when it came to trying to change the already-ingrained “authorized narratives.”

For the record, I tried. Heck, I’m still trying. I’m a writer so I started writing. (I must have believed the Old Saw that “The pen is mightier than the sword.”) For example, I started my own Substack. I made posts, with supporting links, on every site that allowed Reader Comments.

I think “our side” is actually “moving the needle” and we deserve accolades for not surrendering, but I’ve now put aside my false illusions. The people I want exposed, prosecuted and purged from positions of power … are all STILL in positions of power.

We do have some adults in the room …

As mentioned above, the world does still include “adults in the room” who - if we all listened to them - could and would save the world from its current and forthcoming disasters.

In serial Internet posts, I keep calling Jeffrey Tucker, the founder of the Brownstone Institute, “the one adult in the room.”

Since the Brownstone Institute is becoming a force in alternative media, this qualifies as a hope-inspiring development.

Tucker also played a leading role in the creation of The Great Barrington Declaration, which proved that plenty of real scientists and doctors are not afraid to act like adults. (This is the document Fauci and his sycophants - for telling reasons - were so intent on discrediting and censoring.)

Substack is replete with contrarian journalists I’d describe as “adults in the room.”

If you read the Reader Comments, millions of people around the world are showing their support for these writers and also showing that they also qualify as “adults in the room” …. If only these citizens were the mayors of their towns and CEOs of a few big companies.

In the political world, I’m still an admirer of Ron DeSantis although I know the recent “narrative” about him is that he’s also a fraud (neocon, globalist, Jeb Bush clone, etc). 

My two cents is that the man stepped up when almost every other politician in the world was screaming, “More lockdowns; listen to the experts!”

Across America, citizens by the hundreds of thousands voted with their moving vans by flocking to “The Free State of Florida.” Still, today’s conventional wisdom tells us DeSantis will lose in a landslide to President Trump, who also moved to … Florida.

I’m grateful that “Citizen Kane” had the courage to start Citizen Free Press six or seven years ago. At least “our side” has one widely-popular news aggregator that rejects censorship and supports free speech.

The “Tylers” at Zero Hedge - all cast as crazy and dangerous conspiracy kooks - have actually been serving as adults in the room.

Robert Kennedy, Jr. deserves one of those Kennedy “Profile in Courage Awards” for going out on a limb by himself many years ago on the “vaccine” issue and educating so many people about the captured and corrupt Science/Medicine/Big Pharma Complex.

As Kennedy and others can attest, it’s not easy being one of the few adults in the room these days.

This might be my main point: It used to be much easier to play the role of the invaluable adult, the person who used to be able to correct falsehoods with the potential to cause great harm.

Once upon a time, such people didn’t suffer damage to their reputations and social status for standing up for what was right. Such people were actually revered for being the backstop that ensured insanity or injustices didn’t prevail.

Citizens like myself used to look for the adults in the room and just assumed these genuine leaders would speak up and perform their adult magic, which was really the glue that held functional societies together.

Today, these few adults are labeled silly, dangerous children. 

When the genuine adults in the room are ignored and vilified, the inmates end up running the asylum.

Here’s the bottom-line: People like myself, who always expected some smarter or more influential figure to save the day, better grow up and realize we’re going to have to do this job ourselves (even if we are outnumbered 200 to 1.) 

Until now I’d never thought about it, but the real adults in the room assume a heavy burden or responsibility. It’s up to us/them to correct the things a world full of spoiled and ignorant children don’t want corrected.