Author: Julie Kelly
The views of the Authors are not necessarily the views of Enigmose.
After misleading Americans on a long list of consequential issues over the past few decades—from climate change to dietary guidelines and now the common cry of “systemic racism”—the body of expertise is twitching. In this case, I will even allow for coding its death as another coronavirus fatality.
In his 2017 book, The Death of Expertise, author Tom Nichols argued that know-it-all Americans were tuning out the credentialed class at great risk to the country. “We rely on delegating decisions to other people who we assume are going to have some better knowledge of these issues than we are,” he said in an April 2017 speech. “Our republic functions on delegating decisions to others who rely on expertise to help make the best decisions we can make.”
Nichols, a rabid NeverTrumper, often ridicules Trump and his supporters as ignorant rubes who recklessly disregard the advice of Our Betters with Letters. Blaming experts for disastrous foreign wars or lousy trade pacts, Nichols insists, is just a craven political strategy. It is inconceivable to him that disgust with the expert class could be rooted in legitimate gripes or clear evidence of failure.
But like so many assumptions made by his NeverTrump cohorts, Nichols is wrong. Again. Expertise did not die at the hands of deplorable Trumpkins or even web-surfing suburban moms. Expertise wasn’t killed; it has slowly committed suicide.
And we are watching the final death throes of the credentialed class as the last gasps of their credibility can be heard across social media and cable news outlets. The tension between two forms of pseudoscience—social distancing and social justice—snapped, and the experts who vehemently demanded the former now take a knee to defend the latter.
Public Health Hypocrisy
As I wrote last week, the protests and violence unleashed in the name of George Floyd abruptly canceled the expert-backed lockdowns that most Americans have followed dutifully for nearly three months. Close observers of the coronavirus crisis waited in vain for inevitable lectures from public health officials and social media shamers warning that hedonistic rabble-rousers would spread the disease....
Propaganda Disguised as Science
But that wasn’t the only credibility-crushing moment in the past week. The Lancet, a leading scientific journal, retracted a study it published last month claiming the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine didn’t help coronavirus patients and in fact would kill people who use it. After Trump said he was taking the medicine, the Lancet rushed to post the contrarian paper—but it was pure propaganda. ...
Give It a Rest, Already All the pivoting and groveling and mind-changing by the credentialed class caught the attention of one observer: Tom Nichols, the expert-defender himself. Full Story @ American Greatness
Our Super Smart Elite Shines During This Pandemic!
We Americans are truly blessed by having a mainstream media full of brilliant renaissance men, women, and gender non-specific entities who are masters of so many varied and intermittently useful skills and who are eager to share their knowledge with us benighted souls. The pandemic has revealed that every urban Twitter blue check scribbler, MSNBCNN panelist, NYT/WaPo doofus, and barely legal “senior editor” of a website you never heard of, is a Nobel Prize-winning epidemiologist, a master logistician, and a diversity consultant too boot.
They may all be lousy journalists, but damn it, they are also lousy at other jobs that they didn’t even pretend to train to do. ... Read More
The Moral Authority of the Lockdown Fetishists Is Gone.
Thank the Protestors and Rioters. When thousands around the nation took to state capitols to protest the human rights abuses inflicted by "stay-at-home orders," lockdown supporters reacted with sanctimonious outrage.
Declaring the protestors to be "covidiots" who failed to appreciate the virtue and necessity of police-enforced lockdowns, news outlets and lockdown advocates on social media declared that the protests would cause outbreaks of disease, and nurses declared that the protests were "a slap in the face" to those trying to treat the disease. One political cartoon featured an image of an emergency room nurse saying "see you soon" to antilockdown protestors. Read More
They Blinded Us With 'Science'
Throughout the pandemic, political leaders have consistently relied on questionable expert guidance and ducked responsibility for their own choices.
It’s never been obvious just what “the science” is, or why anyone would speak of science as a single truth, but the role it plays is quite clear. It’s the modern equivalent of the Oracle of Delphi, that mysterious font of guidance that Greek leaders consulted during wars and other crises. However foolish or sensible the advice may be, the oracle gives leaders an excuse to duck responsibility for decisions—and their consequences. Read More