Our democracy is teetering on the brink. The consensus is that it will "sleepwalk" into authoritarianism, unnoticed by most Americans until it is too late. But there is a darker possibility.
Excellent post. There is an adjacency here to the rejection of knowledge/expertise on display in the current administration (not uniformly, btw; e.g., the Secretaries of Energy and Interior are both solid, traditionally Republican leaders). The colonel’s disregard — contempt, really — for knowing the actual outcomes of a military action are disturbing but all-too-prevalent these days. Wise decisions cannot be made about running something as complicated as the US military, or the whole government, however, and unconcerned about facts or the experts who can put facts into context. Exhibit A is the shambolic path of tariffs since “Liberation Day”.
To your point of “eliminations”: my Yale degrees now feel like a target on my back rather than a valued credential. I’m glad I’m retired and unlikely to end up on anyone’s reeducation list.
I suspect that if you have an advanced degree, you're still a target.
There has always been a tradition of anti-intellectualism in American society, but I have never in my lifetime seen it so widely out in the open--and so widely celebrated. Ignorance is Strength.
Excellent post. There is an adjacency here to the rejection of knowledge/expertise on display in the current administration (not uniformly, btw; e.g., the Secretaries of Energy and Interior are both solid, traditionally Republican leaders). The colonel’s disregard — contempt, really — for knowing the actual outcomes of a military action are disturbing but all-too-prevalent these days. Wise decisions cannot be made about running something as complicated as the US military, or the whole government, however, and unconcerned about facts or the experts who can put facts into context. Exhibit A is the shambolic path of tariffs since “Liberation Day”.
To your point of “eliminations”: my Yale degrees now feel like a target on my back rather than a valued credential. I’m glad I’m retired and unlikely to end up on anyone’s reeducation list.
I suspect that if you have an advanced degree, you're still a target.
There has always been a tradition of anti-intellectualism in American society, but I have never in my lifetime seen it so widely out in the open--and so widely celebrated. Ignorance is Strength.