Keith Parsons: Expertise

Guest essay on Wednesday, 24 July 2024

THE WAR AGAINST EXPERTISE

Keith Parsons

When I reviewed Liz Cheney's Oath and Honor, I said that it was the most frightening book I had read. Tom Nichols' The Death of Expertise (2^nd edition, 2024) is probably the second most frightening. It details how in times that demand intelligence, our culture is slipping into idiocy.

The problems facing the twenty first century world are staggeringly complex. Pandemics, climate change, and, of course, war head the list, but technological change is so rapid and pervasive, that it adds an extra dimension to our troubles. For instance people reasonably worry whether artificial intelligence will be our servant or master. These problems interconnect and ramify, defying simple solutions, and challenging our utmost intelligence to address them. Never, then, have humans needed the input of communities of experts more than today. More than ever we need communities of people deeply conversant with the nature of these problems and their causes, and capable of offering rational guidance to solve them or at least mitigate their effects.  

Yet, as Nichols documents, we are ironically and tragically in the middle of a cultural revolt against expertise. Experts are now regularly derided, abused, dismissed, and sometimes, as in the case of Dr. Anthony Fauci, threatened with physical harm. Expert opinion is disregarded and crackpot notions proliferate. During the Covid crisis, quack cures were touted by the President of the United States. Conspiracy theories run amok, spreading the grossest and most harmful lies. Charlatans use social and broadcast media to promulgate misinformation and disinformation—and grow rich doing so. Indeed, whole "institutes" and "think tanks" are created by the ultra-wealthy and funded by large corporations and tasked with creating slick propaganda to skew opinion away from the experts and towards the heavily vested interests. The "elite" used to be people richer than you. Now it is people who know more than you. Experts are hated for having the temerity to think  that they know better than just plain folks. Your gut—what journalist Charles P. Pierce calls "your inner idiot"--is taken as the ultimate authority.

Nichols does not mention it, but let me pause to note the sheer irony of this development as it exists in the United States. No nation has a prouder history of scientific, technological, and industrial achievement than the United States. American know-how was demonstrated as early as 1851, when the nations of the world were invited to display their leading cultural and industrial achievements at London's Crystal Palace Exhibition. At the time, British media derided Americans as uncouth backwoodsmen. What would they exhibit? Their skill at spitting tobacco? Haw Haw! Yet technological marvels such as the McCormick reaper and Colt revolver—clearly superior to British counterparts—showed the budding genius of the still-young nation. By the end of the century, America had achieved spectacular progress in communications, transportation, agriculture, manufacturing, architecture, and engineering. The twentieth century added world-leading advances in all those fields as well as theoretical science, medicine, economics, computer science, and mathematics. In the collection of Nobel Prizes, no other nation even comes close.

Now this great heritage of achievement is flouted by armies of truculent know-nothings who traduce expertise and elevate aggressive ignorance. Halfwits and mountebanks are hailed as pundits and invincible stupidity becomes a cardinal virtue. The early Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus bemoaned the aggressive stupidity of his day. He upbraided the Ephesians for ridding themselves of their most intelligent citizens and for refusing to tolerate anyone more knowledgeable than themselves. Welcome to America, the modern Ephesus.

Why? This itself is a complex problem, and so no simple answer is possible. Some would blame Donald Trump. It is true that Trump is a man of astonishing ignorance whose former aides attest to his unwillingness or incapacity to be briefed on the most basic relevant facts. Further, his lies—famously characterized as "alternate facts"—issued prolifically on every topic small and great has made gullibility an indispensable quality for his followers. Though Trump has exacerbated and exploited America's descent into irrationality, he did not invent it. Pierce's book is subtitled How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free, and came out in 2007—when Trump was still stiffing contractors and ogling teenage beauty queens. Trumpism fell on fertile ground.

Obviously, the internet and social media bear part of the blame. Previously, bigots and idiots had a hard time getting their messages out. Maybe they would stand on a soapbox on corners to harangue passers-by. There were extremist organizations, such as the John Birch Society, which had their own publications, but circulation was tiny and inbred. A few, like Father Coughlin, made it to radio and reached large audiences. Generally, though, marginal views remained marginal. Now kooks and cranks can access social media, X-Twitter, blogs, and podcasts to reach potential audiences of millions. Blustering bigmouths like Steve Bannon, who in the old days would have had to find a soapbox, now reach the masses. Further, because of the impersonal nature of communication by computer, people feel free to indulge in rancor that they would never display in face-to-face interactions. The upshot is that the internet, which was hailed at its invention as the greatest tool for enlightenment and education since the printing press, has instead supercharged pornography, propaganda, and petulance.

Nichols notes the baleful influence of instant misinformation available at the touch of a keystroke. Physicians and other credentialed experts are often flummoxed by patients/clients that claim to have "done their own research." But "Googling it" is no substitute for an M.D. or Ph.D. Internet "research" by an ignoramus only deepens and entrenches the ignorance.

More controversially, he blames higher education for much of the problem. A university is supposed to be a place where students can come under the tutelage of real experts, ideally, those making active contributions to their fields. These experts will challenge them and shake them out of complacent habits of thought and facile assumptions. Students will see expertise in action, and be forced to admit that some people really do know more and better than they do. The best of them will start down the road of becoming experts themselves. So a university should foster respect for expertise and the hard work needed to acquire it. Instead, says Nichols, higher education now all too often panders to and indulges young people who already have a grossly distended sense of entitlement.  

According to Nichols, there are too many universities, too many professors, and too many university students. Prior to the Second World War, only a small percentage of Americans sought higher education, and those that did usually faced a stiff selection process. Now, everybody is supposed to go to college, and even marginal students can easily find a school with relaxed admission standards. The consequence is that many students who would do much better if given vocational or military training wind up in universities without really knowing what they are doing there and with no real commitment to an academic field. Many of these students drop out without finishing a degree (but with large loan repayments due). Like Bluto Blutarsky from Animal House, they moan, "six years of college down the drain." Lacking any real commitment to their studies, even if they do manage to graduate, they fail to gain the vital critical thinking skills or the value of learning and expertise that a university education is supposed to impart. Indeed, they depart university pretty much as ignorant as when they came in. Only they have a degree.

Further, with the proliferation of universities, instead of students competing for admission, universities compete for students. Instead of touting academic excellence, students are promised luxurious dorms and great pizza. I was recently visiting the barrier islands off the coast of Georgia and saw a billboard advertising a local college with the blandishment, "College is better by the sea," and depicting a young woman relaxing beachside in a hammock. If college is a vacation, who would want to bother with calculus or chemistry? Indeed, ideologues, with the acquiescence of compliant university administrators have placed universities on a "business model," where students are customers, degrees are the product sold, and faculty are the tools of production. When degrees are manufactured like widgets they cease to have any meaning.

Having taught in higher education for nearly forty years, I find much to agree with in Nichols' analysis. I did indeed have many students who lacked either the aptitude or the motivation for university work. They would drift through the course, showing no interest or engagement, often skipping class, and putting in just enough effort to get their B-. I don't think they learned anything, probably not even my name. Essentially, they wasted my time and theirs (and the money of whoever paid their tuition), and gained no appreciation for learning or the expertise of those who have exerted stupendous efforts to gain it.

But Nichols overstates the case. He taught at Dartmouth and the Naval War College, and I think some of his disdain for more demotic institutions smacks more of snobbery than sober analysis. I spent my career teaching at a mid-size regional public university. Yes, there were apathetic and underqualified students. Ivy league schools get some of those too. George W. Bush attended both Yale and Harvard. Yet there were many also who were curious, smart, and dedicated. I had some students that would have flourished in the ivy league.

I served on numerous promotion and tenure committees, and was often awed by the achievements of my colleagues (and I am not easily awed). Not only did they qualify as genuine and highly respected experts in their fields, but they displayed outstanding dedication to teaching and mentorship. Many of our students are the first of their families to attend college, and they are given opportunities that fancier and far more expensive schools do not. Ivy league schools mainly pass privilege from one generation to the next. Many of our graduates are employed by major corporations, agencies of the federal government like NASA, and educational institutions. Blue collar universities like mine serve a vital role also.

Ameliorating the current disregard of expertise will not be easy. In his early writings on the subject, Nichols had mused that maybe a major crisis, one that required the input of experts to solve, would help to restore confidence in expertise. Then the Covid crisis hit. Far from increasing the respect for experts, covid cracked open ideological fissures and those inclined against experts became rabid in their opposition. We were treated to the spectacle of brainless boors like Congressman Jim Jordan (R, of course, Ohio) berating and belittling Dr. Fauci. Medical personnel have testified to patients dying of Covid who would not admit that they had the disease, and families of the sick furiously abusing doctors for refusing to prescribe horse dewormer. Not even mortal sickness and death can crack open the hermetic seal of irrational conviction. Further, you can't just let the asses bray and ignore the willfully and aggressively ignorant. There are millions of them, and they vote.  

Epistemic tribalism is an aspect of deeper cultural tribalism. David Brooks is perhaps the most insightful conservative commentator on the scene today. (He is one of the last few real conservatives, not a follower of the lunacy that now passes under the name "conservatism.") Citing cultural historian James Davison Hunter, Brooks offers a thoughtful but, in my opinion, flawed analysis of the emergence of this tribalism and the disappearance of American solidarity, a sense of identity as Americans that transcended any local loyalties:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/opinion/trump-biden-authoritarianism.html

According to Brooks and Hunter, since its inception, American identity and ideals have been shaped by the interplay between two contrasting mindsets, the secular rationalism of the Enlightenment and the moral and religious imperatives of Christianity. As Brooks sees it, the dialectic between these two has been salubrious, issuing in a national outlook that both celebrated freedom and individual rights but also evinced a moral seriousness and respect for an objective moral order. The figure in whom these contrasting visions was ideally combined was Martin Luther King, Jr., whose blazing oratory invoked both the ideals of the founding documents of the country and an Old Testament prophet's demand for justice.

However, says Brooks, this fruitful dialectic died with King. In the sixties, secularism emerged as a potent and aggressive movement, forcing religion out of the public sphere and making it a matter of private conscience only. The consequence of secularization was the disappearance of the broad, bedrock consensus of Christian-based values that had pervaded American public life. Secularism offered nothing to fill the vacuum, and the consequence was the emergence of a pervasive moral relativism. As the hippie poster used to say "You do your thing, and I'll do mine." Yet, people yearn for certainties, for a narrative that gives them a distinct identity and a clear moral standpoint. Hence the emergence of identity politics, whereby people identified as tribes rather than as Americans.

Identity politics has been identified with the "woke" left, but, as Brooks notes, nobody has appealed to tribal identities like Donald Trump:

...Donald Trump practices identity politics just as much as any progressive. He tells the story of how small-town, less-educated Christians are being oppressed by elites. He alone is their retribution. That story resonates with a lot of people. In the 1950s, Billy Graham assumed that his faith was central to American life. By the 2020s his son Franklin considered himself a warrior under siege in an anti-Christian culture.

For the Trump Tribe, experts are part of the smarty-pants elite that disdain them and mock their values. Even science is politicized because that is what those obnoxious nose-in-the-air, better-than-thou liberals cite when they want to put down the views of ordinary folks.

There is much truth in this analysis. Trumpism is the paradigm of identity politics. Yet it is dead wrong about secularism and the role of religion in American public life. That role has been far less salubrious and far more divisive and regressive than Brooks notes. True, abolitionists and civil rights leaders cited Biblical authority for their principles, but so did their opponents. As detailed in Forrest G. Wood's The Arrogance of Faith (1990), proponents of racism and slavery turned avidly to the Bible and claimed much scriptural support. The schism between northern and southern Baptists and the fracturing of other Protestant denominations was driven by the issue of slavery, with each side insisting that Christian principles supported its claims. During the civil rights era, conservative white churches consistently favored segregation. Religious writers even justified the genocide of Native Americans. With the rapid rise of the religious right circa 1980, religious activism took on a decidedly theocratic turn, which is carried on by today's Christian Nationalists, who are powerful, wealthy, organized, and determined. So, the impact of religion on America's moral life has been far more ambiguous than Brooks indicates.

Further, if, as Brooks indicates, starting in the sixties, Americans lost faith in the old Christian verities and there was a concomitant decline in moral consensus, it was not due to the emergence of a nefarious ideology called "secularism." The simplest and most plausible explanation for a putative loss of faith was simply that people no longer found it credible. Urbanization with its concomitant cosmopolitanism and demographic changes entailing pluralism probably had far more to do with that than the emergence of an ideology.

The organizations most involved with secularist activism, such as Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, The Freedom From Religion Foundation, and the American Civil Liberties Union, have never been opposed to religion, only theocracy. There is and never has been an American "war on Christianity," however much fundamentalist propagandists like to whine about it. If the American  religious Zeitgeist has changed from the days of Billy Graham to Franklin Graham, maybe it is because their schtick just doesn't stick like it used to. Secularism, so called, is really just that Enlightenment pole that Brooks rightly traces back to the nation's founding ideals. If religion cannot keep up its end of the dialectic, that is not secularism's fault.

Though our analyses differ, Brooks and I (and Nichols) wind up facing the same terrifying reality—a country bitterly divided along tribal lines. What can be done? Brooks thinks that possibly over time good religion can drive out bad, that progressive Christians—like Jim Wallis, I assume—will call religious people back from the jaws of Christo-fascism to rediscover the pristine Christian message of charity, forgiveness, and oneness. I doubt it. Christian progressives had their chance and blew it. If, as the religious right was burgeoning in the eighties, the mainstream denominations had united their voices in clear and strong opposition, maybe they could have had an effect. Water over the dam, now. I don't know what the long-term solution is, but I know that in the short term, we must beat the Trumpist/Christian Nationalist tribe. As of the day this is being written, the Democrats have ended their twenty-four days of hand-wringing, and Joe Biden has stepped out of the presidential race and endorsed Kamala Harris. Democrats better get their act together in a hurry or it's Gilead here we come.

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