We appear to be living during an era permeated by fake news and alternative facts.
President Trump's persistent rehashing of the defense of his erroneous announcement that Alabama would be significantly affected by Hurricane Dorian, which was immediately refuted by professionals at he National Weather Service in Birmingham, had a much longer lifeline than expected or warranted.
The story goes that Trump instructed his staff to have the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration "clarify" the forecasters ' position. Subsequently, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross warned NOAA's administrator that top employees could be fired if the situation was not addressed. This was followed by an unsigned memo supporting Mr. Trump's announcement and a press conference during which the president displayed a weather map featuring a hand-drawn "correction" suggesting that he had looked at a map supporting his contention. A clear case of creating alternative facts contradicting the conclusions arrived at by the scientists trained to do this. Hence, "sharpie gate" was created.
This episode is emblematic of how scientific facts are denied and replaced with politically convenient substitutes embraced by a subservient subset of supporters unqualified or unwilling to question their veracity. In 1964, historian Richard Hofstadter received a Pulitzer Prize for his classic publication "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," (Knopf, 1963). He traced the social movements that altered the role of intellect in American society and concluded that anti-intellectualism and utilitarianism - the doctrine that actions are right if they are useful, mechanical and functional - were embedded in America's national fabric, an outcome of its colonial European and evangelical Protestant heritage. He contended that American Protestantism's anti-intellectual tradition valued the spirit over intellectual rigor. In his mind, anti-intellectualism represented a resentment of the life of the mind and those who are considered to represent it.
Our founders did not appear to harbor anti-intellectual thoughts. They were well educated, intelligent leaders of their time. Many were considered intellectuals in their own right - "sages, scientists, men of broad cultivation, many of them apt in classical learning, who used their wide reading in history, politics and law to solve the exigent problems of their time." (Walter Moss, The Crassness and Anti-Intellectualism of President Donald Trump," History News Network, March 18, 2018). It was during President Andrew Jackson's second presidential term that the French diplomat, political scientist and historian Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his famous description of "Democracy in America," that the spirit of American self-interest appeared crass, suggesting that Americans judge the value of anything by asking: "How much money will it bring in?" De Tocqueville was one of the first students of American life to identify the presence of anti-intellectualism at multiple levels in our society.
The schism between intellectual elites and lesser educated masses is not a typical American occurrence. Anti-intellectualism has been present in some form and degree in most societies. There are studies of very similar phenomena observed in BC periods in Roman and Greek cultures. The Nazis and Fascists burned entire libraries and executed intellectuals who questioned their tactics. More recently, the world experienced Pol Pot's hatred of bourgeois professionals, which led to the killing fields in Cambodia. Mao Zedong set the Red Guards on millions of members of the cultural elite. The Turkish government decided to strike "evolution" from school curricula, and so on.
However, seldom has the occupant of our White House exhibited such a toxic mix of ignorance and mendacity, such lack of curiosity and disregard for rigorous analysis. During his election campaign, Donald Trump regularly complained about how terrible the experts were. "Look at the mess we're in with all the experts we have." Throughout, he has shown his contempt for evidence-based research. His original budget proposal reflected this. He wanted to significantly defund the National Institute of Health, the National Science Foundation, NASA, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. He withdrew from UNESCO, which promotes international collaboration through the arts and sciences. And the administration routinely prevents its scientists from including global warming research reports in their testimony. Mr. Trump has been known to shelve reports, simply because he did not believe them. He skipped a G-7 session about climate change, declaring that American wealth is based on energy and that he would not "jeopardize that for dreams and windmills." And he famously claimed: "I think I know more about the environment than most people."
President Trump's open antipathy towards science, supported by a substantial segment of his political base, has generated a fairly significant body of work by journalists and academics. Titles like: "Americans are not only getting dumber, they're proud of their ignorance." (John L. Mecik, Penn Live, Aug. 3, 2017), and a well-researched book by Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval War College, Tom Nichols: "The Death of Expertise - the campaign against expertise and why it matters," (Oxford University Press, 2017), are only a few.
Some blame the onset of the internet, which made it possible to find a source to support any opinion under the sun, no matter how outrageously unscientific it might be, and which made people feel more empowered to voice their opinion. Nichols believes that "to reject the advice of experts is to assert autonomy, a way for Americans to insulate their increasingly fragile ego from ever being told they're wrong about anything."
President Trump seems to be taking this conclusion to heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment