EXPERTS VS. CRACKPOTS
Geoffrey Norman is the author of 12 books of fiction and non-fiction, and many articles for periodicals including the Wall Street Journal , Sports Illustrated , National Geographic, Esquire, Men’s Journal , the Weekly Standard , and others. What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass. Maybe we should listen less to the experts... and pay more attention to the crackpots. Plainly, it couldn’t hurt. Or so the experts assured us. And then, the pandemic came. Some experts had, of course, been predicting it. But many of them got it wrong when the virus first appeared. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and one of the most visible members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, initially played down the danger as being less than that of an ordinary flu. He, and other experts, got it wrong. The New York Times uncharacteristically distilled the pandemic experts at the Centers for Disease Control to their essence with this headline: “The C.D.C. Waited Its Entire Existence for This Moment. What Went Wrong? ” If the experts get it wrong at each turning point in history... then what good are experts? We are reminded of Lord Melbourne’s observation:
If the experts get it wrong at each turning point in history... then what good are experts? It seems that even if you can’t win ‘em all, you ought to win at least some. Especially if you are an expert. the heads of the other panelists – the real experts. “Crackpot” was likely the most complimentary name they were thinking. Trump, of course, did get the nomination. But, hey, experts can’t win them all. And every single “expert” went on to predict, when the election came around, that Hillary Clinton would win – easily. But the experts who missed the election of Donald Trump also missed the vote in Great Britain for Brexit. Which came down, in the essentials, to a rejection of a big part of that End of History vision . And contrary to expert predictions, China was not becoming an enlightened despotism, if any such arrangement were ever possible. It was turning into a hostile force and ignoring the rules and the standards of good global sportsmanship. It was stealing, cheating, and bribing its way to economic power and advantage. Among those it was bribing were a number of “experts” in their various fields of technical expertise. Still, goods, money, and people were moving around the world. Oh, Trump was playing tariff games. But surely the tides of change, the great forces of history, cannot be held back, even if they are temporarily diverted.
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October 2020
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