"the erosion of respect for expertise" has more than one precedent in the history of totalitarian politics. In fact any sore of information as well as the ability to use it can be seen as a challenge to revolutionary authority - a return to status quo ante, which a revolution needs to prevent. I often think of the Maoist "cultural Revolution of the late 60s and 70s when students replaced professors, hospital orderlies and janitors took over from doctors and nurses and most persons of skill or knowledge or authority were actually punished - and worse. I know people who went through it. Trumpism is a similar attempt to replace a government, a culture, a legal and educational and health care system and sell it as freedom - and we see it in the attack on education, on medicine, on science, on information, on freedom of choice and equal protection under the law. As many as two million Chinese may have died in that decade long experiment. It involved widespread violence and persecution and although one has to be careful with analogies, I expect something similar if we cannot stop the Trump Gang and its barbarian revolution.
"the erosion of respect for expertise" has more than one precedent in the history of totalitarian politics. In fact any sore of information as well as the ability to use it can be seen as a challenge to revolutionary authority - a return to status quo ante, which a revolution needs to prevent. I often think of the Maoist "cultural Revolution of the late 60s and 70s when students replaced professors, hospital orderlies and janitors took over from doctors and nurses and most persons of skill or knowledge or authority were actually punished - and worse. I know people who went through it. Trumpism is a similar attempt to replace a government, a culture, a legal and educational and health care system and sell it as freedom - and we see it in the attack on education, on medicine, on science, on information, on freedom of choice and equal protection under the law. As many as two million Chinese may have died in that decade long experiment. It involved widespread violence and persecution and although one has to be careful with analogies, I expect something similar if we cannot stop the Trump Gang and its barbarian revolution.
I am not optimistic, Glenn.