Posted on 01/22/2025 4:27:50 AM PST by edwinland
It hasn’t exactly been the best century for the expert class. Begin with the response to September 11 — the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, which were supported by bipartisan majorities. Then the financial crisis and the bailouts. Then Brexit and the election of Trump. Then the pandemic: what was supposed to be a triumph of management for a technocratic elite instead wound up as a worst-of-all-worlds scenario with prolonged restrictions and school closures and 7 million dead — from a virus possibly caused by sloppy scientific research practices. Then inflation, which was supposed to be a thing of the past. Throw in here, if you like, “wokeness” and how it’s eroded trust in higher education and triggered a cultural backlash.
Of course, the experts have gotten their comeuppance. Because it was better predicted by polls and because he had already been president, Donald Trump’s win last month was treated more with resigned shrugs than with expressions of shock, even among the liberals I know.
But if you zoom out the lens, 2024 was in some ways more shocking than 2016 — and much more of a middle finger to the expert class. In 2016, progressive institutionalist types could at least console themselves by saying the public didn’t know what it would be getting with Trump, and might have had some natural desire to experiment when the alternative was Hilary Clinton, the unpopular avatar of the technocratic status quo. Well, this time around, the public saw what it got with Trump — including the pandemic, January 6, and all those crimes and misdemeanors — and decided it liked it better than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. In the national exit poll, 52 percent of voters approved of Trump’s performance from his first term in office, compared to 42 percent for Biden.
(Excerpt) Read more at natesilver.net ...
Dec 2, 2025?
Dam, this year flew by and I didn’t get to do so many things :)
And it’s losing the battle of ideas, the one thing that it’s supposed to win.
😭😭😭
It is surprising how many of these college graduates think they know more than the average person who didn’t go to college. It never dawns on them that the education they received was a poor education. Then they assume that just because you didn’t receive a college degree they are smarter than you. And again, it never dawns on them that you are able to learn without going to college. And so, they are not receptive to anything you say because you are beneath them.
This guy is full of himself!
It takes a Village. A River runs through it. /massive eyeroll
What a midwit!
Never, ever forget that this idiot savant is not on our side, and not all that bright either. I know he’s looked up to as some sort of a prognostigator/ tea leaves reader, but I find him banal. ‘Pod
One of the best things you can discover about life, and I don’t mean this in a mean way, is that, no matter your level of education or expertise in certain areas, as far as the wider world is concerned, you don’t know sh**. That’s why the elites fail with their master plans: like the rest of us, they are ignorant on subjects outside their own expertise. It’s why they’re destined to fail.
Absolutely NOT a great analysis. This is a lie. The public saw these things were inflicted on Trump by the “expert class” NOT that Trump inflicted them on us.
DON’T trust Nate Silver to feed your dog.
That’s pretty much how I see it, too.
It is surprising how many of these college graduates think they know more than the average person who didn’t go to college. It never dawns on them that the education they received was a poor education. Then they assume that just because you didn’t receive a college degree they are smarter than you. And again, it never dawns on them that you are able to learn without going to college. And so, they are not receptive to anything you say because you are beneath them.
**********
I went to law school and practiced law for years.
My husband quit college and worked his head off to make a successful multi store heating and cooling distribution business. Guess who has more practical knowledge about how the world works? Well, we both have a lot, but he knows more about finance and contracts and tons of stuff I will never know. Without college.
Those college kids have a pie in the sky idea. I remember my law school roommate and I when we first got out of law school thinking we knew everything. NOT!
Marxists are well-educated. Bernie Sanders graduated from U. Of Chicago. So they're exposed to ideas. The problem is that those ideas do not work in the "Real World".
So getting an education can be a bad thing. Because it can mean that you're indoctrinated. Especially if you'll attending an Ivy League University to learn how to become a Trotsky Clone.
The democrats never learn. Hillary was unlikeable. So they switch to Biden and cheat. Then they thought Kamala was a good choice. They are so woke they need a Rip Van Winkle nap.Nobody can stand Kamala NOBODY.
This is a key problem with the “expert” class— they assume that because they have some narrow band of expertise, that they are expert in everything. Experts need to stay in their lane. When scientists leave the lab and presume to be able to write policy, for example. Bad idea almost always.
There seems to be so much “padding” or “featherbedding” in government employment (at all levels) that there is a natural resentment for any employee or manager who displays competence. It’s why DEI took hold and spread like Kudzu. You could probably cut 90% of the government workforce, like happened at Twitter/X, and still accomplish the mission.
It’s because most are experts on in their own mind!
How many of those college-educated, government workers thought it was a great idea to bring in distractions like “Admiral” Rachel Levine and Sam Brinton?
The smartest man I ever knew was my father, and he left school for work at age 16. But he was well read, knew history, and was very wise to the ways of the world.
Between the people that sorta-could “stand” Kamala and the people that were convinced that Trump was evil incarnate, they got 49%. The Dems need to keep stirring the political pot to maximize their vote during the mid-terms.
The worst form of “experts” are government appointed experts and the belief that government appointed experts most of all should have their expert pronouncements respected.
It’s actually an illogical and irrational idea, because it suspends reason and asks everyone to believe that mere appointment, or designation, as the “official” experts they have magically been endowed with such supreme and superior expertise that there cannot reasonably be unofficial experts whose opinions may be different and yet equal or better than the official experts.
The best form of official experts is none, and government should instead go out and seek multiple and different independent outside experts and from a compendium of their ansewrs try to develop a coherent policy, and one that admits it is not an infallible policy, but one that additional time and research may demonstrate the need for modifications. Meanwhile, to every extent possible, the individual should have access to all the available independent outside experts and from them draw their own conclusions.
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