The previous chapter extended my hypothesis to virtually every domain of human activity and every exercise of authority once considered legitimate. The conflict, I maintain, is everywhere. Particular skirmishes, like Tahrir Square and Climategate, are what philosophers call “epiphenomena,” surface effects rather than causes, the crack and rumble of a dissolving glacier. Underneath these events, and far more consequential, has been the strange reversal in the relationship of the public—ordinary people who are interested in an affair—and the elites.
