Democraticus is a free publication intended to promote democracy as well as equip citizens to be active participants in it. Democraticus also is meant to educate as well as sound the alarm when democracy is under attack as it is today in the U.S. and other parts of the world. It depends on readers like you to promote it, so please connect your friends and family with this post and encourage them to subscribe to Democraticus!
This is the first of a series about “wars” that have been waging against Americans for years, especially in the last ten years. Yes, “wars” is a strong word, and yes, our attention presently (and rightfully) has been on the war the Trump Administration launched against Iran.
But, the word “war” can mean various kinds and types of struggles, not just those involving military action. In this case, “war” as used in this post is one of a struggle for our minds. It’s a struggle that will control, impede or develop our critical thinking ability as Americans attempting to fulfill our role as citizens in a democracy.
There are many such “wars” going on against America today, many of which have been launched against us by our own government and its officials. These other “wars” are not only being waged by our present federal government. They are also being waged against us by many state governments, those in business and the news media who are in political alignment with the Trump regime, as well as various “think tanks” funded by dark money like the Heritage Foundation. For example, we have a “war” going on against public education. Another “war” is underway against public service. Science is also being assaulted by a “war,” as is our form of government, democracy.
You get the idea. It is total war which we will examine piece by piece. Here we are going to get into a “war” that on its face, doesn’t at first seem to make sense. But, it becomes more understandable as we examine it and take it apart here piece by piece.
As with many things in a democracy, major societal forces that shape our thinking, our culture, our government, our art, and our innovation, can “creep” into current events. These can not only be major, but they can also be “seismic” in their scope and impact. However frequently, because these forces come on the scene slowly, they are not all that noticeable to us, at least at first. We fail to notice the assault these forces represent. One of those “forces” is our national aversion to expertise which is being exploited with this war-like assault.
The term “expertise” is used here in a wide context to take in all forms of knowledge, wisdom, and experience that has been gained and accumulated over time via collective societal and national life, experiments, as well as academic study in many fields and subjects. These fields include science, engineering, health, design, medicine, and more. They are a plethora of disciplines, subjects, and academic fields of study that have proven over time to be factual, true, tested, and most importantly, of benefit to mankind. That “covers a lot of ground” in terms of a practical working definition for expertise, doesn’t it? Yet, the expertise they represent is undergoing a blistering assault. Why is that?
On its face, rejecting expertise doesn’t seem to “compute.” Few Americans would argue the fact that in today’s world, given the reality of the many complicated subjects that affect their daily lives, they do not and could not possibly know everything they need to know in order to deal with and make sound decisions about them. Whether it’s in business, our medical care, technology, our finances, or any number of other areas, there is simply too much information to find and know. And that information is always changing and changing rapidly. That’s why we look to experts, is it not? Especially for big decisions affecting our personal well-being and that of our family.
Then why is it today in 2026 many Americans often have difficulty accepting expertise and instead, choose to disbelieve it? Why do they seem unconcerned when they reject this expertise at their own peril? It’s an interesting question with many facets to its answer that we would do well to take heed of. To his credit, in 2017 Tom Nichols, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, saw this “war on expertise” becoming a force with toxic impacts on U.S. society. Writing in Politico, Nichols contended that average, “…Americans have never much liked eggheads. That’s not a bad thing in itself: Americans are a skeptical but level-headed people—or were until recently…”
It was during Trump’s first term Nichols noticed this disturbing trend of Americans’ disbelief in expertise that now: “…has curdled into something more toxic, even dangerous.” Then presidential candidate Donald Trump campaigned in 2016 against experts, calling them “terrible” and saying he didn’t need them. When he became president, Trump seemed “…determined to prove that experts are unnecessary to the running of a superpower…”
Thinking this way of doubting expertise has migrated from the public square into many Americans’ homes and daily lives. As Nichols points out, it has become an attack on knowledge itself whereby,
“…Parents argue with their child’s doctor over the safety of vaccines. Famous athletes speculate that the world might actually be flat. College administrators ponder dropping algebra from the curriculum because students keep failing it. This is all immensely dangerous, not only to the well-being of individual citizens, but to the survival of the United States as a republic.”
What has caused this to happen? Nichols argues that the rapid pace of “…globalization and technological advances have created a gulf between people with enough knowledge and education to cope with these changes, and people who feel threatened and left behind in the new world of the 21st century.” (emphasis mine)
What would cause Americans to go beyond healthy skepticism, to questioning experts on subjects they have no idea or knowledge about, but instead, harbor distrust toward them and believe they know more about it than the experts?
Certainly “trust” is indeed the key word here. Why would Americans distrust scientists who are telling them about a deadly disease? Or distrust a law enforcement or public official advising them to exercise caution regarding a specific set of volatile circumstances threatening our safety and well-being? Why is this force so strong it causes us to fail to see that we are not thinking or acting in our own best interests, be it individually or collectively as a nation?
There is more than one thing causing this distrust, lack of confidence, and disbelief. Let’s pull it apart.
One might think that in a democracy that Americans would be encouraged to examine expertise, and if they believe it to be valid, then trust it. Two key words here are “trust” and “democracy,” both of which support the other. Democracies require citizens with critical thinking skills that can, on their own initiative, examine topics and issues in order to arrive at conclusions as to their veracity. From those conclusions they can extend their trust to the source of the expertise they have critically examined. For that reason, it seems logical that citizens in a democracy would likely accept the need for strong expertise to assist them in making informed decisions about complex topics affecting their government and the world they live in.
But in today’s U.S.A, that’s far from the case. Expertise is based on trust, a democracy’s foundational element. For those in power today in the U.S., democracy is not the goal. They are pursuing the “unified executive” theory of the presidency, aka a dictatorship. Consequently, expertise is not valued or encouraged, and trusting that expertise is actively discouraged.
Instead, Americans today are being herded by their leaders into something other than a democracy- an autocratic state. In that setting, critical thinking and the ability to properly analyze and examine evidence offered by expertise is not something valued by those in power. It is certainly not something those in power encourage the citizenry to do. This is because in a non-democratic (i.e., authoritarian) government, there can be only one expert creating one truth- truth spoken by and espoused only by the leader and his designated spokespersons. That one expert resides at the White House. Consequently, all other expertise is considered unnecessary and to be ignored.
We have borne the consequences before of a leader who intends to monopolize all expertise and trust, and we are bearing those consequences again.
Americans had a front row seat on this undermining of expertise, and thus truth associated with that expertise, during the Covid pandemic. This discrediting and doubting of expertise impacted the first Trump administration’s response to the virus, and contributed to the lack of unified response by states and the federal government to this health crisis.
National health experts, warning the public of the dangers of the deadly Covid virus, were routinely contradicted or undercut by even the President himself. Public health officials’ recommendations regarding Covid vaccine treatments, testing, masks, quarantining, working from home, and much more were at best, reluctantly embraced by the administration, if accepted all. Instead, such recommendations and the expertise they were based on were ignored, under emphasized, or questioned. President Trump even suggested alternative treatments such as bleach injection or even untested malaria drugs as ways to treat Covid.
The result? Trust in modern medicine was eroded. Many Americans became wary of public health officials’ expertise regarding Covid treatment (especially vaccines) and chose to ignore it. This was a result of a president who pursued his Covid agenda which was not public health driven. His agenda centered on establishing himself as the sole purveyor of all knowledge and truth in the midst of the largest public health crisis of the century. After all, he wanted to be reelected and public health recommendations about Covid that caused public concern didn’t build confidence in his presidency.
The result we don’t like to think about? Failure to endorse expertise that could have saved lives was dismissed or ignored causing huge suffering and death from this deadly disease. There was a heavy price to pay for rejecting medical and scientific expertise in a democracy during a pandemic in favor of accepting being bludgeoned from the “bully pulpit” of the presidency with lies and what was nothing more than pure nonsense.
The likelihood of rejecting expertise increases if we are willing to accept someone as a “sole beacon of truth.” This happens in four steps. First, the leader sets himself up as a “renegade against authority” having an inside perspective on how to solve a problem, the means and know-how to solve it, along with the confidence to solve it. The leader’s second step is to establish his truth credibility through use of “information asymmetry.” This is when someone (i.e., the follower) has a deficit of knowledge compared to the one holding themselves out to be the “expert” (i.e., the leader) who is telling them he “has it all figured out.” Thirdly, the leader tells people what they would like to be true. In this case of the Pandemic it was that the virus will “just disappear.” And even though Trump lost the 2020 election, he got 70 million votes, and then after that, he came back and won the 2024 election.
With facts no longer being necessary for the leader to make “his case,” he can make his fourth move. The leader positions himself as a viable alternative to the experts whether those experts be “the generals,” “the scientists,” or “the doctors.” The leader’s followers have to choose between trusting the experts or the leader. However, by then that choice is facilitated by what psychologists refer to as identity fusion“…a sense that you and the group have a shared core essence, and a feeling of reciprocal strength.” The leader of the group of followers is now seen as the sole beacon of truth to his followers. And, if that’s the case, who needs experts?
Occasionally Trump might see the need for expertise besides his own, but even then, he chooses who is to offer that additional expertise. Right after Trump was elected to a second presidential term I wrote a “Democraticus” titled Cabinet Qualifications? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’Qualifications! In that post, we explored the reasons Trump had nominated people for positions in his cabinet that were clearly unqualified. Few of these nominees had any education, experience, practical knowledge in the areas of expertise applicable to the job they were supposed to perform in Trump’s cabinet.
While many Americans were aghast at the lack of qualifications these cabinet nominees had, it still begs the question- why would Trump nominate them and why would a Senate majority confirm them? Further, why would Americans not care about the lack of qualifications these Cabinet nominees actually had?
The answer is Trump’s leadership style. It is autocratic and authoritarian in nature, explained away as a “unitary executive,” a term used to obfuscate the issue of having a “strongman” ruler. With an authoritarian leadership style the only thing that matters to the leader is loyalty, not qualifications such as expertise and past work experience. The leader does not see as important, nor wants, members of his cabinet who perceive their role as having any type of agency. Nor are they empowered to make their best decisions as a cabinet member in the interests of the country. Their own judgements do not matter. Only what the leader, in this case President Trump, wants and decides actually matters, and with it, total unswerving loyalty to the president is required, no matter what.
Because of that, it is a “short walk” to what is a “ship of fools” that accepts incompetence over expertise. After all, if the president is willing to accept loyalty over both experience and knowledge, why would anyone object to the incompetence that accompanies it? Voila, a culture of incompetence is not only in place, but also is now tacitly accepted.
With that one mental transaction, Americans begin to concede that the quality of government services is not important, only power and those who hold and wield it is what government is really all about. Delivery of public services by the government becomes a complete afterthought. We could fill up pages of the documented incompetence, misdeeds, corruption, and bad decisions these unqualified cabinet members have made in less than two years of the second Trump administration. Still, the decisions these cabinet members made, as poor quality as they have been, are seen by a large number of Americans as not having much, if anything, to do with one’s daily life when the reality is nothing could be farther from the truth.
When expertise is undervalued or dismissed in a democracy, its “death spiral” begins. Unqualified people holding office for political gain that continually underperform, and often botch the execution of the basic requirements of their office, becomes routine. Worse, this poor performance by government officials becomes accepted. Trust in the government erodes, then declines. Democracy is undermined and the new form of government, an authoritarian regime, emerges sporting a “unified executive” who promises (we think) to deliver stronger leadership than the former democracy they worked so hard to destroy.
That’s why this thing called “expertise” is a big deal. And that’s why this “war” on expertise has everything to do with how we as citizens in a democracy actually critically think, and whether or not this democracy will survive. An “all knowing,” “purveyor of all wisdom” president that believes he knows more than the generals, the scientists, the diplomats, and the FIFA World Cup soccer officials (to name just a few), is exactly the type of president that will not govern. He will rule by fiat (i.e., executive orders), and he clearly has the minions willing to carry them out.
Expertise, and the trust it generates, is critical to survival of the American democratic republic. The question then becomes- do a majority of Americans recognize that fact? Further, will Americans demand better governance than what they are now receiving from their current government- a government that shuns expertise and embraces incompetence, buffoonery, goofballs, and clowns?
In 2026, we will likely learn the answers to these questions, if it’s not too late.
Notes:
· How We Killed Expertise - POLITICO Magazine
· Trump Administration Abuses Thwart US Pandemic Response | Brennan Center for Justice
· Timeline: Tracking Trump alongside scientific developments on hydroxychloroquine - ABC News
· “How Trump Sold Failure to 70 Million People”, by James Hamblin, The Atlantic, November 10, 2020
· “People With “fused Identities Are Willing to Die for Their Social Group,” Association for Psychological Science, August 18, 2010, https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/people-with-fused-identities-are-willing-to-die-for -their-social-group.html
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.