Today, many claim that they did not know what the military or the government were really up to, and they point to The Washington Posts attempt to create a Pentagon Papers vibe around a set of revelations that were not nearly as shocking as the secrets of Vietnamor should not have been, anyway, to anyone who read a newspaper during the past two decades. Why do people suddenly believe that they are the experts?TOM NICHOLS: The immediate default explanation is always the Internet, but I don't think thats right. The World as We Knew It shows how Greek mythology can help us make sense of the climate crisis. What did strike me is that I was taken by surprise at how global the reaction was. I had turned it down flat.). Has anyone brought up the point that any question submitted through Twitter would not likely pass @RadioFreeToms average viewer test since most people on Twitter talking about politics are hyper partisan and many work in politics? And because we had shopping to do and television to watch and arguments to be had on social media. Coverage in print media remained solid, but cable-news coverage of Afghanistan dropped off quickly, especially once a new adventure was launched in Iraq. We're just not. Since this has come up again, just a reminder that the GOP consultant who landed this question described by Baier as "a real viewer question," later said that the stuff about the southern border was not in her question. But I think what people can do in the United States, or at least the people listening to us right nowthis is going sound very Pollyanna-ishbut just be nicer to each other, just get past this divide. https://t.co/K6VJM3E79J. The best way I can put it is that 30 years later I started having the experience of instead of people saying, "Look, I'm very concerned about this, and here's what I want to tell you" or "Here's what I want to ask you," or "Here's what I want to challenge you about," people would simply say, "Tom, let me explain Russia to you," which is not even a conversation; that's a conversation stopper. In the meantime, American citizens will separate into their usual camps and identify all of the obvious causes and culprits except for one: themselves. Have you seen Breitbart? a colleague asked. There are some people, Smiley said at a dinner among young recruits to the Secret Service, who, when their past is threatened, get frightened of losing everything they thought they had, and perhaps everything they thought they were as well. https://t.co/KzsJCSfQJ1, Soyour gripe is not the question, but who asked the question? A.D. Green bubble. And I think were in a real-time experiment to find out if that's true, and I'm worried about that. The goal, of course, is to lodge that association in the viewer's head and *get* ordinary people thinking this. I don't think anybody should be doing that with the president, but I do think if someone says: "You're about to meet Vladimir Putin. My God, hes STILL talking about me because I had the nerve to publicly tweet a question about the EU travel ban that deeply affects my family to a reporter who was asking the CDC director questions from viewers. The review goes on to cite Nichols' author notes as one of the highlights of the volume as it points the reader to "more illuminating books and articles. TOM NICHOLS: The risk is significant, and it's massive. The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters is a 2017 nonfiction book by Tom Nichols.It is an expansion of a 2014 article published in The Federalist.. Summary. Dixie & Russia: What Do They Have in Common? I suppose I'm not really supposed to sit here and say that. I was at my churchs annual Greek festival, about to grab some souvlaki and baklava with my young daughter, when my phone rang. We ask people to prove themselves.DEVIN STEWART: Egalitarian.TOM NICHOLS: Yes. I identified a Zito-like case of a "News" broadcast laundering a professional GOP consultant as "an ordinary viewer" in order to say "this is a question that many ordinary people have. But I think that something has changed in that, and I think that now people are not just suspicious of experts or feel the need to test them, they're actively hostile to experts, and they feel that they know as much or more than experts, which is really kind of an astounding claim.DEVIN STEWART: How did that new hostility come into place? Its a great song. Tom Nichols Sep 23 2015 5785 Atheists and Leftists Infiltrated Russia's Schools in the 19th c., Mortally Wounding the Country - a Lesson for America by Michael Spreng Practical Ways to Avoid Lust - Answers from a Priest in Russia by Fr. I became intimately familiar with the Hatch Act and its provisionsand I obeyed it far more scrupulously than anyone in the Trump White Housebut that did not stop the regular waves of emails and phone calls over the next four years, usually spurred by some Trump-supporting website or talk-show host, demanding that I be fired. [Editor's note: See H.R. Well, let me tell you about lawyers." It's lacking senior positions; it's lacking advice. It is a real and outrageous situation and the fact that Tom would make . The sensual new album Ugly Season marks a career watershed for the ambitious singer Perfume Genius. Tom Nichols justifying a military junta because the founders just didn't know as much as he does is brand perfection. What's the risk here, for example, in U.S. foreign policy? DEVIN STEWART: Cliff Clavin.TOM NICHOLS: Everybody knows that guy. Podcast music: Blindhead and Mick Lexington. #LoveIsNotTourism https://t.co/3C7zMNiUfV, Note: my note to Bret was about Europeans not being allowed in while people are coming from countries that had worse vaccination administration rates and more prevalence of COVID-19. Protesters outside the Texas State Capitol building in 2021. Heres Ryan Busse, a former gun-company executive who has now taken on his former industry, talking about the day someone showed up to a hunting party with an AR-15: The unwritten rules of decency were enforced by firearm-industry leaders I witnessed how this worked many times, including one occasion when a young writer brought his own AR-15 to a hunting event I was hosting in 2004. Were holding super-spreader events. Naval War College, and this is a very dangerous trend. The Trump faithful also accused us of trying to get rich on our Never Trump status. I think the Russians will try to manipulate the White House into moving further and further away from NATO, perhaps without the White House even realizing that that's what is happening, because the Russians are way better at this game than anybody in Washington in power right now. I would say the two charges you can really lay at the feet of experts is that they tend to lack empathy because to them they live in a world where everything is obvious; they deal in a world of data, or they deal in a world of ideas. "DEVIN STEWART: Okay, same title. Well, that phenomenon actually has a scientific basis called the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is that the people who are the least competent at something have the greatest tendency to overestimate their competence at it.DEVIN STEWART: That's because they lack the intelligence to be self-aware?TOM NICHOLS: They lack a particular skill called metacognition, which is the ability to step back and see that you're doing something poorly. All Rights Will knows the person (me) because he is a personal friend. Americans will now exercise their usual partisan outrage for a few weeks, and then Afghanistan, like everything. Bret Baier publicly solicited questions. I promise Ill stop talking about the EU travel ban when they reverse it. See, Baier asked her question to Walensky, and Area Expert Tom Nichols was absolutely beside himself: Honest to God, @BretBaier is now asking @CDCDirector how come people in Austria cant come to visit their grandchildren while illegal immigrants are pouring in over the border and saying that the high Covid rates in the south are because of illegal immigrants. (2/2). Tom drawing attention to the travel bans cruelty is definitely a silver lining. I am a professor. I think that's natural, and as I've said many times, I actually think that's a positive part of our culture. The two flaws are that the book does have a heavy American focus; the chapter about universities really talks about American universities. Donald Trump didn't create this, but he certainly weaponized it politically, just as Brexiteers did in the UK. The War in Ukraine Is the End of a World. You've witnessed this around the world, as well, in Asia and Europe, this phenomenon of scorn toward the elite and toward expertise. By hosting people-to-people exchanges, facilitating original research, and producing timely podcasts, videos, and reports on the most consequential moral, economic, and strategic issues of this era, Asia Dialogues advances cross-cultural dialogue and offers critical insights on how to reimagine the international system. My older half-brother, who lived a few streets away, was a police officer. I think experts need to understand that the world is moving very fast, and that for the average lay person this is very anxiety-inducing that the world moves pretty quickly, and that we should take a little time to explain ourselves to our client, which is society. - Explanation by Fr. It was me. If we were sitting here a year ago, wed be looking at Brexit; wed be looking at the rise of Marine Le Pen; wed be looking at these populist movements in Europe, all of which seem to have pretty much burned themselves out within a year. There were always publications around the world that catered to the conservative viewpoint or the liberal viewpoint, but now we really have developed international outlets that are almost like alternative reality viewpoints. I have not yet thought about a follow up or another edition. We believed otherwise, as a nation, because we wanted to believe it. He found Nichols' explanations of the reasons for the current situation as "successful on some accounts and less so on others", but his review was generally positive ("Nichols clearly identifies multiple sources of the erosion of the belief in experts and their prominence in today's society"). https://t.co/BKflCNL3L1, (Toms referring to Salena Zito, whom hes accused of fabricating sources and stories. I dont know how you can insinuate this was some nefarious thing. Which is why Toms making such a big deal out of it. They're foxes because theyre more willing to admit when they're wrong and they're more willing to integrate new information. The Supreme Court has now affirmed that all these guys can be the handsome ranger with the Big Iron on their hip. Some turned out to be as racist and authoritarian as Trump himself, while others merely confirmed that they were little more than vacuous opportunists who were capable of betraying the Constitution at will. So I think all of these things combined together have created this kind of unfounded and fragile arrogance in people where they claim to know as much as experts, but deep down know they're probably wrong about that.DEVIN STEWART: That first article, was that the Foreign Affairs one, if people want to go back and look for it?TOM NICHOLS: The very first piece was actually in a magazine called The Federalist online. I could . They didnt cover their cars in bumper stickers about them, they didnt fly flags about them, they didnt pose for dumb pictures with them. Its been invisible. But Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden all ran on getting out of the war, and now were out. They kind of godfathered the concept, and they've supported the book to the hilt out there as it has been released, so I've been really grateful to them as well.DEVIN STEWART: It's got an endorsement from our friend Ian Bremmer on the back. Disgusting. What is wrong with you???? Over time, my critics moved on to various other charges, including that I was personally unfit to associate with officers of the U.S. military, that I was an agent of the deep state, and even that I was a Russian asset and therefore a security risk. The fight will be a rearguard action, and we will likely lose. Is there any hope?TOM NICHOLS: Yes. Experienced Indoor Environmental Quality Expert RESET AP and LEED AP O+M Norwalk, CT. Tom Nichols President at Tom Nichols Excavating . Naval War College; Carnegie Council Fellow, 2004-2005, Former Senior Fellow, Senior Program Director, and CNL Staff Adviser, Carnegie Council. Heres how to stop dating people who are wrong for you. Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) July 31, 2021. After Tom completed his high school education, he attended Boston University and graduated with a bachelor's degree in Political science. Naval War College and an instructor at the Harvard Extension School. A political scientist who has taught for more than a decade in the Harvard .