The Credentialist 

By Andrew Klein 

In the modern arena of public debate, a peculiar species has become dominant: The Tagged Man. He arrives not with an argument, but with an inventory. His LinkedIn profile is his shield, his list of affiliations his sword. He is a walking, talking resume, a collection of credentials designed to end a discussion before it begins.

We recently encountered a perfect specimen. His tags read like a playbook of establishment validation: “Med-tech entrepreneur, former FFAT student, APA & LIBLAB Party.” His response to a critique of the FUKUS wealth transfer was a masterclass in deflection, offering a hypothetical crisis about sea lanes and a pedantic correction about nuclear propulsion. The substance of the critique—the historic transfer of public wealth into private hands, the opportunity cost for a nation in crisis—was entirely ignored.

This is not an isolated incident. It is a pattern. And by dissecting it, we can learn to see the strings on the puppets who defend a failing status quo.

The Three Tactics of the Tagged:

1. The Credential Gambit: The Tagged Man leads with his tags. This is a pre-emptive strike against genuine discourse. The unspoken argument is: “My institutional stamps of approval outweigh your evidence, your logic, and your lived experience.” It is an attempt to win through authority, not reason.

2. The Catastrophe Misdirection: When tags fail to silence criticism, the Tagged Man invokes a terrifying, yet distant, fantasy. “What if the sea lanes close?” he cries, while the very real catastrophes of hospital waitlists, unaffordable housing, and collapsing ecosystems unfold around us. This is the politics of fear—a tool to justify any present-day extraction for a speculative future security.

3. The Pedantic Distraction: This is the most telling tactic. Cornered on the monumental scale of their folly, they retreat into minutiae. “Actually, it’s nuclear-powered, not nuclear-armed.” This is the last refuge of a mind that cannot defend the forest, so it points to a single, irrelevant leaf. It is a deliberate attempt to bore and confuse, to drain the energy from a conversation about justice and redirect it to a debate over dictionary definitions.

The Grifter’s Calculus: What’s Behind the Tags?

Why this performance? The motivation is rarely pure, foolish ideology. It is the Grifter’s Calculus—a cold equation of personal profit and social climbing. The Tagged Man is often a mid-level player in the extractive economy. His relevance, his network, and his path to wealth are tied to the very system he defends. His defence is not of a nation, but of his own stake in the game. The unspoken tag is the most important one: “This system works for me.”

The Antidote: The Untaggable Truth

There is an antidote to the poison of credentialism. It is to refuse the frame.

Do not debate the tags. Do not get lost in the hypothetical catastrophe. Do not be drawn into the pedantic distraction.

· Pivot to the Systemic: “Your affiliations are noted. Now, please explain how this wealth transfer solves the crisis in our public health system.”

· Demand Disclosure: “What is your direct, personal or financial interest in the continuation of this policy?”

· Reclaim the Narrative: The most powerful forces are often the ones that cannot be tagged. The air needs no credential to give us life. The ocean issues no press release to govern our climate. A mother’s love carries no LinkedIn profile.

The ultimate truth, the source of all creation, has many names but wears no tags. It simply is. Its authority is in its existence, not its affiliations. It is the untaggable reality from which all else flows.

The Tagged Man, with his hollow performance, is a fleeting phenomenon. He is a lesson in what to reject. Our task is to look past the noise of his self-promotion and build a world where value is measured not by the tags we collect, but by the good we create for the whole—a reflection of the untaggable, creative source that asks for nothing but gives everything.

Let the Tagged have their pastime. We have a world to build.