COVID-19 Has Forever Destroyed Americans' Trust in Ruling Class 'Experts'https://townhall.com/columnists/joshhammer/2021/06/04/covid19-has-forever-destroyed-americans-trust-in-ruling-class-experts-n2590463... The brainchild of progressive President Woodrow Wilson, arguments on behalf of the modern administrative state are ultimately rooted in, among other factors, a disdain for the messy give-and-take of republican politics and an epistemological preference for rule by enlightened clerisy.
Put more simply, the most straightforward version of the argument offered by partisans of the administrative state amounts to, "Trust the experts." And over the century-plus since Wilson's presidency, the "trust the experts" leitmotif has moved well beyond the realm of prevailing dogma for mandarins in such agencies as the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. Rather, for large swaths of the citizenry and the elected official class, "trust the experts" now reigns supreme for everything from the military ("Trust the generals!") to public health ("Trust the epidemiologists!").
And therein lies the rub.
The trials and tribulations of COVID-19 in America have dealt an irreparable blow to the credibility of America's ruling class and the ruling class's implicit appeal to its authority as a coterie of highly trained and capable experts. No single person exemplifies this more than Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has attained celebrity status during the pandemic as the nation's leading immunologist and forward-facing spokesman for our public policy response. As Steve Deace and Todd Erzen detail in their new book, "Faucian Bargain: The Most Powerful and Dangerous Bureaucrat in American History," Fauci has repeatedly contradicted himself throughout the pandemic, waffling on what the "science" demands at any given moment while still always seeming to err on the side of draconian overreaction.
I was tempted to say the "Forever" is hyperbole, but in reality, for many people I've seen, "forever" or "indefinitely" is where they are, and arguably, justifiably so. Among partisan-shaped messaging, self-promoting, and inability to be honest and say, "We don't know", the "experts" have pretty much sunk their credibility into sabotaging Trump and acquiring tyrannous power.
