Excellent essay. You’re correct that this is only the beginning. For too long the institutions, experts, and elites have tried to push a narrative that everything was working just fine, when, in fact, the calm surface hid a raging current of destruction below. Too much is broken. Simple solutions won’t be viable. The entire system needs to be repaired, but who can be trusted with the task?
The immolation of expert credibility is downstream from the great schism (and maybe even cold civil war) taking place throughout the West, between on one side the forces of Our Democracy™, who represent the globalist neoliberalism that owns and operate the world and all the people who eat well off it (profs, politicos, mainstream journalists, managers and bureaucrats etc), and the rest of us all sort of huddled under the umbrella of nationalist populism or populist nationalism.
Our Democracy™ represents the culmination of maybe a century of actual democracy and civil society being subsumed by bureaucratic managerialism, where the expert class and the elite class have each other's backs, feather each other's nests, and vouch for each other's credibility. But while they were busy hogging almost all of the power and almost all of the assets, they became blind to their Achilles' Heel (we all have 'em): the secular cosmopolitan postnational expert class was gradually detaching itself from the nation and its people, from local communities, norms, values, concerns—which is why when they decided they were going to install a reign of Moral Clarity (where morality means they're always right and everyone else is always either evil and/or stupid), it came across as a conquest instead of a reformation.
Whatever happens next we'll need all our experts to be OF US and not just OVER US. Most people are fine with various experts having better jobs and homes etc than the rest of us (assuming they seem to be earned through hard work), but when these same people decide that their status entitles them to tell the rest of us what we must think and believe and who to vote for, this is when they go from allies to enemies.
Awesome summary of that fractious podcast and assessment of its proximate root causes. I think you are right on and honest that rebuilding from here will be hard. I do know that freedom of speech and liberty must form a basis of legitimate institutions. From prior essays, critical theory does work hard to tear down any attempt to rebuild any institutional framework of reality and truth.
Incidentally, when I was about 10 years old, my dad 'helped' me (did it all himself while I watched...) build a functioning car engine out of cardboard 'tutus' from paper towels and toilet paper rolls for my science project. Needless to say, I consider myself an expert in car engines and am willing to consult with any mechanics or automobile building plants. One thing in particular that I'd like to share my opinion on though: CVT is not an advancement. Please stop destroying everything that makes driving fun.
This happened because ideology is an exact epistemological replacement for religion and these people are all materialists so they have none. Nature abhors a vaccuum, so...
Very nice piece. I have some thoughts, but am in general agreement with your diagnosis. I have been saying much the same thing. We need a bridge between elites & experts.
Excellent essay. You’re correct that this is only the beginning. For too long the institutions, experts, and elites have tried to push a narrative that everything was working just fine, when, in fact, the calm surface hid a raging current of destruction below. Too much is broken. Simple solutions won’t be viable. The entire system needs to be repaired, but who can be trusted with the task?
The immolation of expert credibility is downstream from the great schism (and maybe even cold civil war) taking place throughout the West, between on one side the forces of Our Democracy™, who represent the globalist neoliberalism that owns and operate the world and all the people who eat well off it (profs, politicos, mainstream journalists, managers and bureaucrats etc), and the rest of us all sort of huddled under the umbrella of nationalist populism or populist nationalism.
Our Democracy™ represents the culmination of maybe a century of actual democracy and civil society being subsumed by bureaucratic managerialism, where the expert class and the elite class have each other's backs, feather each other's nests, and vouch for each other's credibility. But while they were busy hogging almost all of the power and almost all of the assets, they became blind to their Achilles' Heel (we all have 'em): the secular cosmopolitan postnational expert class was gradually detaching itself from the nation and its people, from local communities, norms, values, concerns—which is why when they decided they were going to install a reign of Moral Clarity (where morality means they're always right and everyone else is always either evil and/or stupid), it came across as a conquest instead of a reformation.
Whatever happens next we'll need all our experts to be OF US and not just OVER US. Most people are fine with various experts having better jobs and homes etc than the rest of us (assuming they seem to be earned through hard work), but when these same people decide that their status entitles them to tell the rest of us what we must think and believe and who to vote for, this is when they go from allies to enemies.
Great work by Wokal Distance!
Awesome summary of that fractious podcast and assessment of its proximate root causes. I think you are right on and honest that rebuilding from here will be hard. I do know that freedom of speech and liberty must form a basis of legitimate institutions. From prior essays, critical theory does work hard to tear down any attempt to rebuild any institutional framework of reality and truth.
Excellent Insights.
Incidentally, when I was about 10 years old, my dad 'helped' me (did it all himself while I watched...) build a functioning car engine out of cardboard 'tutus' from paper towels and toilet paper rolls for my science project. Needless to say, I consider myself an expert in car engines and am willing to consult with any mechanics or automobile building plants. One thing in particular that I'd like to share my opinion on though: CVT is not an advancement. Please stop destroying everything that makes driving fun.
CVT is the bane of my car maintenance existence.
This happened because ideology is an exact epistemological replacement for religion and these people are all materialists so they have none. Nature abhors a vaccuum, so...
Very nice piece. I have some thoughts, but am in general agreement with your diagnosis. I have been saying much the same thing. We need a bridge between elites & experts.