The Crisis of Confidence Is Here
And the cult of expertise has had its day
I had an interesting and telling encounter with someone on Substack Notes recently. It went like this, with her comments rendered in italics:
Elon musk is the richest man in the world. If you have all the money you could ever want, what’s left to crave? Why that answer is simple. You need something to fill that unrelenting feeling of emptiness. It is power. Unfettered power. That is what you would crave.
How do you know this?
How do you not know this?
Very easily. I’m not a mind reader. Nor are you, though you play one on Substack.
I do not read minds. But I understand the human psyche. I have two degrees to that effect. Do you?
Yes, a better one: A master’s degree in history, earned back when history was still taught and studied.
Yeah yeah we all took history pal. Must not have understood it. Because for all I tents and purses this is the Nazi regime all over again.
Now, I’ll concede that her speculation is plausible. Maybe Elon Musk is after power—though how one accumulates power by going through the federal government’s financial records is a good question. More likely you’d wind up with a headache brought on by eye strain. But she isn’t just speculating about Musk’s motives. She knows that he’s seeking power. And why? Because she has two degrees bearing on the “human psyche.” And that to me, is a tacit admission that she thinks she can read minds, by virtue of having earned the requisite credentials.
My own comment concerning history was not followed up, but what I was thinking when I typed it out was that the more I study and reflect on history, the more mysterious it becomes. With the best will in the world no historian, professional or amateur, can really enter into the spirit of past ages or the minds of the dead. At best, the historian can produce a sketch that touches on past realities. And to a greater or lesser extent, the same is true of all forms of expertise: It’s far more limited in range than experts imagine—a reality that explains, for instance, the repeated failures of centralized economic planning.
The cult of expertise in America, dating I would say from the Progressive era, has had a good run, but its day is done. The hubris and dishonesty of various elites—political, intellectual, scientific—was bound eventually to trigger a backlash. All that was needed was a catalyst, and COVID-19 provided it. Only now are we coming to grips with the enormous damage that the pandemic caused to the credibility of individuals and institutions with a claim on the trust of the American people. Nor can all the SCIENCE IS REAL lawn signs and Tony Fauci bobbleheads in existence knit up that raveled sleeve of trust.
In some ways this collapse of the cult of expertise is a good thing: a necessary course correction. But it’s not an unmitigated blessing. Distrust, however soundly based, has a way of spreading like an oil slick across the water. And low-trust societies tend to be politically unstable, a prey to populism, authoritarianism, or outright dictatorship.
Among the factors that brought National Socialism to power in Germany, one is seldom mentioned: the transformation of Germany into a low-trust society. Throughout the nineteenth century and up to 1914, the German’s people’s trust in elite institutions, experts and officials was well-neigh absolute: an article of faith that transcended politics and class. Never has there been a better-behaved revolutionary movement than the German Social Democratic Party of those times. “In Germany,” it was said, “there will never be a revolution, because in Germany revolutions are strictly forbidden.”
The Great War changed all that.
Right up to 1918, the German people were told, and believed, that victory was just around the corner. The government said so, the politicians said so, the generals said so. And in the large they were believed. Thus the November 11, 1918, Armistice came as a massive shock; the collapse of faith was immediate and violent. Revolution was in the streets, and only an opportunistic alliance between the Majority Social Democrats and the High Command of the Army staved off a communist takeover.
The inflation crisis of the early 1920s, which wiped out the savings of the thrifty German middle class, continuing political unrest, anger and dismay over the 1919 Peace Treaty—all played their part in the development of a German postwar culture characterized by skepticism, cynicism, conspiratorial paranoia, extremist politics on the Right and the Left. Hitler’s path to power was paved for him before anybody beyond Bavaria knew his name.
Today, in Europe and America, we see the same process working itself out, albeit in a far less apocalyptic form. Donald J. Trump is no fascist—but he is a populist whose appeal to the American people is grounded in his withering condemnations of tradition elites in and out of government. Trump’s indictment is exaggerated, sometimes grossly so, but it’s not without point. And it has to be added that in their hysteria, in their fervent embrace of the -20 side of so many 80-20 issues, his political opponents are sharpening that point. To take a single example, Democrats and progressives cling to the orthodoxies of gender ideology when it is patently obvious that the American people don’t want gender propaganda in the classrooms of public schools, don’t want biological males competing in girls and women’s sports—believe, in fact that the whole thing’s a dangerous absurdity.
The broad Left, which brands itself as the party of Facts, Logic, Reason, and Science, has not yet come to grips with the causes of its defeat. They put down the trust crisis to the stupidity of the American people, they revile Trump as a fascist, and they tell one another that they simply must fight harder. In short, they just won’t listen.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with expertise as such. A reliable plumbing contractor, a good teacher, a skilled bartender—they make life better for the people they serve. So do scientific research and applied science. But a prosecutor who refuses to prosecute, a school board that embraces DEI, a physician who profits from “gender-affirming care”—they’re not only damaging the fabric of society but undermining public trust.
A start could be made on a restoration of trust if credentialed people would just stop claiming that their post-nominal initials and professional certifications endow them with superior wisdom and amazing superpowers. But as my encounter with a credentialed expert on the human psyche suggests, they’re far from ready to abandon that claim.
The supposed experts can start by being truthful to their specialty knowledge, their sole claim to authoritative status. At the same time, they can imitate the postwar nuclear scientists and not presume that their superior intelligence and knowledge puts them outside normal politics. They acted like citizens, not technocrats. Their goal was to inform the public and elected officials, not engage in power grabs or lie publicly to cover up their mistakes.
All the same, many who were willy-nilly pushed into pseudo-authoritative positions, like "fact checkers" at the social media companies and "truth squads" during the pandemic, were elevated by the media into "experts" ruling on this opinion or that, with no reason to trust their judgment.
Much of the problem is that the last 35 years has seen the full consequences of the spread of academic credentials to those educated beyond their intelligence or limited common sense.
“I tents and purses “. Wonder where she got those degrees?