Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Why Are All the Experts Such Dopes?
Townhall.com ^ | June 7, 2021 | Kurt Schlichter

Posted on 06/07/2021 3:32:41 AM PDT by Kaslin

The great progressive dream is to dispense with rule by us mere citizens in favor of a government staffed by technocratic, disinterested experts who selflessly apply the principles of science (social science and real science) to create a better, more efficient, effective, and impactful society. Of course, the progressive advocates of expertocracy assume that those experts will share their coastal, urban and blue perspectives, mores, and values – funny how that works. And it has been working, for them at least. We normals are now expected to defer and submit to the commands of unelected functionaries bossing us around for our own good, though this is only good for those said experts and their fellow travelers in the ruling class. Over about 250 years, America has gone from its leaders being selected on the basis of the divine right of kings to its leaders being selected by on the basis of the divine right of nerds with advanced degrees from Yale.

The sordid reality of our glorious expert caste is exemplified by that nimrod gnome Fauci taking a break from generating conflicting stories about how he helped fund a Chi Com bioweapons lab to giggle in his emails about how Brad Pitt played him on SNL, a TV show that was last funny … well, ask your dad when that was – he might remember. See, today even alleged the experts in comedy are falling short.

It might be one thing if the experts demonstrated some expertise. If these doofuses could actually make the trains run on time, at least our trains would be on time. But our experts today are such that they think it’s a great idea to spend billions on high-speed trains running between Bakersfield and Fresno – the one choo-choo journey on earth where you desperately want to be late.

Have you noticed that all the experts…stink?

The experts on war haven’t won one in twenty years.

The experts on diet told us for decades we needed to eat processed carbs and eschew the meat our ancestors thrived on.

The experts in finance gave us 2008; the experts in healthcare gave us Obamacare.

This is not new. Long ago, the experts gave us eugenics and the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, perhaps the best proof one might offer to support the notion of systemic racism since, of course, the experts are a key component of the System.

Now, experts are not always wrong. In fairness to Dr. Fauci he was right about COVID, at least for a moment. Of course, this is only because, over the last 18 months, that ubiquitous shrimp has literally taken every possible position on the pandemic, so he was bound to have been right at least once simply because of the sheer number of different and often contradictory poses he struck. Remember the Great Mask Circle of Jerking Us Around? His just-FOIA’d emails reiterate that idiocy. First, masks were bad, then good, then we needed two masks. One of those has to be correct, right?

And then there are the Wuhan lab lies. “Oh well I never! The thought that commies might have let a bug out of their lab is preposterous, unscientific and – worst of all – racist!” Yeah, it was a real stretch for those nuts on the internet to think the source of a bat coronavirus outbreak might not be the pangolin buffet just around the corner from one of the only labs in the world doing US-funded Frankensteinian experiments on bat coronaviruses. So nutty, in fact, that the smart people at Facebook – experts in fact-checking, according to themselves – suppressed those nuts while the smart people in the media called it a “conspiracy theory.” And guess who was right? The nuts.

But hey, you should totally believe the experts when they tell you that, no Schiff, no foolin’, this time the world really is going to burn to a crisp in 10 years if you peasants don’t give up your trucks, cheeseburgers, and freedom.

How dare you suspect their expert opinions come from anything but the purest of sciences! Experts are unaffected by the concerns of mere mortals, such as money, fame, and social acclamation. By the way, enjoy reading Dr Fauci’s book on the way to that giant BLM march, which experts declare is exempt from COVID restrictions because racism, as embodied by blue collar cops getting in fights with felons, is a worse danger than a deadly virus those same experts’ friends let set loose.

Not surprisingly, today everyone wants to be an expert, because alleged expertise is power. This has spawned the rise of credentialism – look how Mrs. * insists on being called Dr. * even though, for all its worth, her ridiculous education doctorate might as well be in phrenology. Nor do you actually need a real field in which to declare yourself an expert. Cheesy frauds who a few years ago were mere race hustlers are now professional “antiracism” experts, cashing in big on their expertise/scam by shaming liberal saps at universities and corporations at five-figures a harangue. The bar just keeps falling as everyone seeks their own expert cred. The “survivors” of various oppressions – transphobia, fatphobia, whatever – are a kind of expert too; we’re certainly expected to listen to them tell us what to think without daring to challenge them. And then there are internet “influencers,” their expertise in literally everything is demonstrated by their number of followers. My favorite are the legal experts on Twitter – both with and without law degrees – sharing the full (and fool) benefit of their inexperience on legal questions and inevitably getting it not just wrong but massively, incoherently, inexcusably wrong.

There’s a cure for this plague of experts, and it’s called “accountability.” Accountability is the bane of experts, so our ruling caste has dispensed with it. That’s why these people can be wrong time after time after time – on COVID, on Russia, on why crime happens and on how the economy works – and yet still maintain their public sinecures even though they are batting .001. The real reason the elite hated Donald Trump was not that he was an ideological conservative (he only sort of was) or that he tweeted mean things (they like mean tweets, just not ones directed at them). It was that Trump identified the failures of “the best and the brightest” and called them out. There is nothing these experts hate more than challenges to the authority they think they deserve.

The elite won’t hold its own members accountable, but we normal people can. Normal people should stop simply shrugging and heeding the urgings of the alleged experts. Instead, we should ask questions and demand results. And the conservative media, unlike the mainstream’s bunch of licensed, registered regime apologists, must continue asking tough questions like, “Why do you think that?” and “Where’s your proof?” instead of swooning over tiny toads like Tony F.

What Instapundit Glen Reynolds calls “The Suicide of Expertise” is right there in front of us. Sadly, we ourselves are now experts – in the disastrous consequences of the failure of expertise.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: covid19; experts; progressives
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-35 next last

1 posted on 06/07/2021 3:32:41 AM PDT by Kaslin
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

They aren’t. We see their results abs make the mistake of thinking they actually wanted what we do, and therefore, are dopes. The wars are not intended to end. They are designed to enrich the right crowd and advance careers. Fauci and his bizarre and evil research was designed to enrich the right people and increase control over people.

They are not dopes. They are evil.


2 posted on 06/07/2021 3:48:17 AM PDT by DesertRhino (Dog is man's best friend, and moslems hate dogs. Add that up. ....)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
The experts on diet told us for decades we needed to eat processed carbs and eschew the meat our ancestors thrived on.

How right he is in this little aside. This dietary advice has caused worldwide deaths in numbers 1000s of time superior to the Wuhan plague.

3 posted on 06/07/2021 3:54:16 AM PDT by Blennos ( )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
See, today even alleged the experts in comedy are falling short.

Huh?!

Regards,

4 posted on 06/07/2021 3:56:12 AM PDT by alexander_busek (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

A corollary of Jerry Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy.

By the time they get to the top of the food chain, they’ve forgotten anything they ever knew, except how to backstab political opponents and how to lobby for bigger appropriations from Congress.


5 posted on 06/07/2021 3:57:17 AM PDT by Chad C. Mulligan (Eleutheromaniac)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
Clara said it best:



6 posted on 06/07/2021 4:18:57 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Chad C. Mulligan
The Peter Principle: up close and personal.
7 posted on 06/07/2021 4:22:32 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Chad C. Mulligan

I learned something new, thanks.


8 posted on 06/07/2021 4:24:32 AM PDT by pingman ("I ain't in no ways tarred.." of WINNING!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

Many of the experts are mentally ill.


9 posted on 06/07/2021 4:36:45 AM PDT by FreedBird (T)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Elsie

The Peter Principle: up close and personal.
——compounded with the fact that many experts are thinkers, not do-ers.


10 posted on 06/07/2021 4:38:42 AM PDT by drSteve78 (Je suis deplorable. WE'RE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

It is a mistake to believe our enemies are fools. They are not.

None of these are mistakes. They are deliberate efforts to obtain the societal change they desire.


11 posted on 06/07/2021 4:40:53 AM PDT by Renfrew
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

Because CoupFlu was never about public health or science.

Duh.


12 posted on 06/07/2021 4:43:24 AM PDT by mewzilla (Those aren't masks. They're muzzles. )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

The weakness is that somebody needs to deem these guys experts. And the people who select who the experts are, are people who will select those who advance their agenda.


13 posted on 06/07/2021 4:45:09 AM PDT by SauronOfMordor (A Leftist can't enjoy life unless they are controlling, hurting, or destroying others)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

Most are well-paid party hacks who push its agenda first and foremost.


14 posted on 06/07/2021 4:46:19 AM PDT by jughandle (Big words anger me, keep talking. )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

I think a big part of this is the “soft science” aspect of much of this expertise.

Years ago I worked in an academic library. People would come in and do research and ask questions, and the library staff would do their best to respond and maybe we got it right and maybe we didn’t.

We hired a new person and she would get exasperated by the casual approach to knowledge. She said her husband was at MIT (just down the road) working on his PhD in Physics. He used math. He knew if he was right, or if he was wrong. He lived in a pretty well-defined world where opinions didn’t count for very much. But at her job, everything was “could be this, could be that, try the third floor, I don’t know, good luck”.

In a soft science world (politics being one aspect) experts may have opinions, but people should stop putting trust in them. They don’t actually know. Their world is not well-defined (though some of them seem to think it is). They kinda sorta think you might find an answer up on the third floor. Or not.

The whole concept of “expert” seems faulty to me. But the modern world seems to trust them.


15 posted on 06/07/2021 4:46:24 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy ("I see you did something -- why you so racist?")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Renfrew

People who blindly follow experts are “useful idiots”.

People who take on the role of Expert and blindly help our enemies to impose societal change, are perhaps “useful experts”.


16 posted on 06/07/2021 4:49:38 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy ("I see you did something -- why you so racist?")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: Renfrew

A very old thread about an even older article (1939) about the New Deal. It is pertinent today. (This is a favorite of mine and explains so many things liberal even today.)

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/929392/posts

Worse outwitted were those who kept trying to make sense of the New Deal from the point of view of all that was implicit in the American scheme, charging it therefore with contradiction, fallacy, economic ignorance, and general incompetence to govern...

Its meaning was revolutionary and it had no other. For what it meant to do it was from the beginning consistent in principle, resourceful, intelligent, masterly in workmanship, and it made not one mistake...

Having passed this crisis, the New Deal went on from one problem to another, taking them in the proper order, according to revolutionary technic...

The end held constantly in view was power...”


17 posted on 06/07/2021 4:53:11 AM PDT by 21twelve (Ever Vigilant. Never Fearful!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

Expert: Ex means former, and a spurt is a drip under pressure.


18 posted on 06/07/2021 4:58:48 AM PDT by Fido969 ( Sc)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
before the internet, the definition of expert was:

"someone with a briefcase that was more than 25 miles from home".
19 posted on 06/07/2021 5:04:34 AM PDT by bankwalker (groupthink kills ...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
Thomas Sowell is an expert on this subject, and outlined it in his excellent books, most notably in his work "Intellectuals and Society" which I highly recommend.

A quote from Edmund Burke (used by Sowell in his work) summarizes the most level headed attitude we should all adopt towards these people who overstep their intellectual boundaries. Burke said:

"I revere men in the functions that belong to them, but not beyond."

20 posted on 06/07/2021 5:26:55 AM PDT by rlmorel (Leftists are The Droplet of Sewage in a gallon of ultra-pure clean water.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-35 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson