Donald Trump didn't create this, but he certainly weaponized it politically, just as Brexiteers did in the UK. Updated 11:55 a.m. on Jan. 21. Our current alliances with our liberal friends may not be a permanent realignment. Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) September 15, 2021. It was the generically intelligent guys like McNamara saying: "I ran a car company. Just the other day the president's national security advisor, who is a very intelligent guyhe's a three-star general; he's written a book; he's a thoughtful personbut when he says things like, "Well, you know, communicating our goals and issues to Russia is just like talking to any other country," as a Russia expert I can tell you that's just wrong. No candidate can. 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[1], Kirkus Reviews described The Death of Expertise as "A sharp analysis of an increasingly pressing problem", although Nichols (who "sounds less like an alarmist than like a genial guide through the wilderness of ignorance") fails to propose a satisfying solution. First, insofar as that populist fever seems to have overtaken people running down blind alleys. we're going to run right back into that same problem we ran into in the 1960s.DEVIN STEWART: That's a very subtle and important nuance there.TOM NICHOLS: Absolutely.DEVIN STEWART: The clich is "a little bit of knowledge is very dangerous. Have just been notified that hes on day 3 of talking about me #BloomWhereYoureLaunderedandPlanted pic.twitter.com/MUv15aMssw, Ellen Carmichael (@ellencarmichael) August 2, 2021. Ukraine needs any weapon its troops can learn to use, including tanks, to hold the line on the international order and the worlds safety. https://t.co/e3E8svjYRu. Thats an awfully elitist attitude, Tom. I feel sorry for him. [5], Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times stated that The Death of Expertise "turns out to be an unexceptional book about an important subject. (1/2) https://t.co/2BfNkuAtao, I didnt bring up illegal immigration. I am able to ask a question of my government via a reporter soliciting public input for questions, the same as anyone else from any profession could. It's interesting that as I've been writing this and as the Trump administration came in, there was a rumor that the president's assistant, Steve Bannon, has been walking about with a copy of The Best and the Brightest. It takes some time [in some sections] for him to make his point". Looking at what we have in office and the whole spectrum, what could possibly go wrong?TOM NICHOLS: Let's just stipulate that World War III is the worst thing that can go wrong. I happen to know the person who asked this question. 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. Now I dont feel that one bit. Interestingly enough, the most capable people and the most intelligent people are the most likely to underestimate their abilities, partly because they have a better sense of where the edges of performance are. So there is suspicion on both sides of the aisle. He later pursued his master's degree in political science from Columbia University. If that happens, America will become a different country, and we will all enter the first iteration of an American dictatorship. "[6], Joshua Huminski of the Diplomatic Courier described the book as "timely", citing Donald Trump's statements on climate change and Pew Research surveys regarding genetically modified organisms. "DEVIN STEWART: You talk about how this kind of plays out at dinner parties, where the least informed are the loudest. The other is that at the end I didnt reallywe were talking earlier about The New York Times and how all their reviews always have a little of a backhand in them. The speaker pays off his debts to the extremist base. Another example I can give you is when I went to a golf coach once. Podcast music: Blindhead and Mick Lexington. And what if Trump wins? Notice that nowhere does. It turns out it's a true science thing; it actually happens.TOM NICHOLS: Exactly. "DEVIN STEWART: So the ancient wisdom of "know thyself," [Ancient Greek aphorism] maybe the ancients were onto something back then?TOM NICHOLS: There is a reason we should all still be reading Shakespeare, exactly. A political scientist who has taught for more than a decade in the Harvard . Pegoda also described The Death of Expertise as "extremely interesting, important, and timely" and said that "Nichols, in short, provides a brief History, informed by psychology and political science, of what he argues is a new phenomenon whereby people in the United States are not just regularly wrong or ignorant but 'proud of not knowing things'". But apparently the globalizingI don't want to call it "populism"effect of the Information Age, information overload, the broadening of education, and the segmenting of the media clearly has had a global impact on the relationship between experts and lay people.DEVIN STEWART: Are you hinting at a follow-up book?TOM NICHOLS: As the folks who follow me on Twitter point out, I could probably populate an entire annual volume just by collecting things out of my Twitter feed. 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Republicans told her about, Karine Jean-Pierre happy to announce 33rd security assistance package for Ukraine, Laurence Tribe cheers on Adam Schiffs frothy-mouthed lunacy over SCOTUS; makes fool out of himself, Aaron Sibarium offers another jaw-dropping peek at what Yale Laws been up to, and its a, NBC News is happy to help push narrative that Ron DeSantis is an authoritarian fascist dictator, Former Disinformation Czar Nina Jankowicz wants YOU to help her raise money to sue Fox News, Media Matters CEO endorses fighting Nazis carrying FNC in order to destroy all left opposing, This hot take from The Atlantic on why some big cities are ungovernable is something else, Heres another big indicator that the Biden WH economic brags are total BS, Rep. Jamaal Bowmans care package for Ron DeSantis definitely delivers on BS and, Chris Hayes bellyaching about Elon Musk buying Twitter and letting the poors/normies be heard BACKFIRES, will maintain all existing travel restrictions at this point, California Do Not Sell My Personal Information, Its been three days, and Tom Nichols *still* thinks Ellen Carmichael conspired with Bret Baier to ask Rochelle Walensky a planted question. He is the author of The Death of Expertise (Oxford 2017), Eve of Destruction (2008), No Use: Nuclear Weapons and US National Security (2013), He is currently a Senior Associate of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, a Senior Fellow of the Graham Centre for Contemporary International History at the University of Toronto, and It is a real and outrageous situation and the fact that Tom would make . I have not yet thought about a follow up or another edition. Breitbart claimed I was breaking that law. About the author: Tom Nichols is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the author of its newsletter Peacefield. I think one of the reasons I've been a successful teacher is that when I walk out of a classroom on any given day I can say, "You know, I really hit that one out of the park," or "Boy, I was really not on my game today." Just because Tom Nichols doesnt care doesnt mean no one else does. The Foreign Affairs piece from last March, if folks want to take a look at that, is a digested version of the book; that is kind of the book in microcosm.DEVIN STEWART: What's the title of The Federalist one?TOM NICHOLS: It was called "The Death of Expertise. 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? Her profession has nothing to do with it. You need to let go, Tom. As is Tom drawing attention to his awfulness its important that as many people as possible realize what kind of person he is. They just want to say, "I'm awesome," because thats the feedback they get from an educational system that says that all the kids are awesome and because nobody ever wants to correct their friends and sayit's kind of like being at karaoke, and the guy goes up there and he massacres a song and then steps down and says, "I nailed it, right? Tom standing in a podium. Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 21, 2023 Tom wrote a whole thread about how people in East Jesus, USA, are obsessed with people like him, because Tom doesn't care what people in East. My older half-brother, who lived a few streets away, was a police officer. To mock us or use it as a way to dunk on Republicans or Fox News or whatever is incredibly screwed up. Honestly, I just assume that many declines in the quality of American life for the foreseeable future will be announced with In a 63 decision Elections have consequences, and with the current composition of the Court, this decision was inevitable. Watch. As we approach Election Day, my career and my constitutional rights remain intact. If Trumps minions were determined to curtail my constitutional rights, I was more determined to exercise them. Tom Nichols Owner at 4 Elements Group and JTCO LLC. Its been a year since Russia invaded Ukraine, and the war continues. Coverage in print media remained solid, but cable-news coverage of Afghanistan dropped off quickly, especially once a new adventure was launched in Iraq. Personal Life. Reserved. Thomas Michael Nichols [2] (born December 7, 1960) is an American writer, academic specialist on international affairs, and retired professor at the U.S. That was the big change. Make some popcorn and get comfortable as he burns down billions of . Homosexuals Persecuting Christians in America - Do You Feel The Walls Closing In? Ellen Carmichael (@ellencarmichael) July 30, 2021. [Editor's note: See H.R. I'm pretty good at what I do. Nor did Carmichael, who never tried to mislead anyone with her question. A lot of folks have asked me if I wrote this about the election, and I really didn't; this goes back about three-and-a-half years, to early 2014. https://t.co/VTVSaWa2au, Will knows the person because it was a conservative writer and consultant who fed the question to Fox. And it's humbling. Read this review of Tom Nichols' new book "Our Own Worst Enemy" - and why writer Oliver Traldi disagrees with Nichols' idea of democracy. My hometown was a military town, and almost all of the men I knew were veterans who owned weapons and knew how to handle them. It's important to note the date [January 2014]. TOM NICHOLS: Thanks for having me, Devin. My tweet had a ton of replies from other #LoveIsNotTourism families asking, too. MARCH 11, 2022, 6 AM ET. Many of us instead held firm and made the case for democracy and the rule of law from the right flank against our own tribe. I used to think of myself as a gun-control conservativeI supported both the right to own firearms and the interest of the state to limit that rightbut Americas gun culture isnt about rights. Shutterstock / The Atlantic. What does my profession have ANYTHING to do with this? It is a real and outrageous situation and the fact that Tom would make light of it in an effort to score imaginary political points is horrible. Americas at the mall.. America still needs accountability at every level. They need to be more transparent, and they need to be more confident. @redsteeze backs conspiracy theorist and projection artist Tom Nichols into a moral and intellectual corner https://t.co/JCFkLsEGUr, Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) August 2, 2021. Naval War College, and this is a very dangerous trend. They didnt cover their cars in bumper stickers about them, they didnt fly flags about them, they didnt pose for dumb pictures with them. I have made my case against the president loudly and clearly. TOM NICHOLS: The risk is significant, and it's massive. She cant restore sanity to the GOP. (Ill plead one personal exemption: When I was a little boy, relatives in Greece once posed me in a Greek Evzone-soldier costume with my uncles hunting shotgun. I do political/policy PR on totally unrelated topics so Im therefore ineligible to petition my government on this one that impacts my family. Who are the experts who are laying out the possible snares and traps here to warn the president about "This is what it's like to talk to the Russians; these are the things"? https://t.co/EYxkliEueO. Across the world today, there is active hostility towards experts, says Tom Nichols of the U.S. But I didnt run the first time Trump was elected, and I wont run if it happens again. I think we can be optimistic about a couple of things. That's a no-no. Tom wouldnt know about using his platform to help anyone. What's the risk here, for example, in U.S. foreign policy? Tom: This has everything to do with Ellen. He is speaking to them and for them, and declaring that he and his kind are better and have a right to rule over us. So I went on the offensive, writing and speaking out even more. I had turned it down flat.). If Ron DeSantis wants to gut Floridas public colleges, thats up to Floridians. It's great. Then he said "hey, I'm just asking what our viewers are asking. I think of this passage often, not only because I spent the first part of my career fighting (in my own small and mostly insignificant way) the Cold War, but also because I have spent the most recent part of my career fighting the possible rise of authoritarianism in my own country. Seraphim Rose Discusses the Jewish Question - Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Englishman Drives Off Satanists and Rescues a 1000-Year-Old Church, When Knights Surrender Their Sword The Problem of Effeminate Men, Married at Age 16, Has 11 Children, Loves Her Husband, Lives in Russia, VIDEO: A Legendary American Monk Who Inspired Christians in Russia - Fr. Meh. For example, in Vietnam, the "best and the brightest" were the people who were generically smart but not experts. Protesters outside the Texas State Capitol building in 2021. Across the world today, there is active hostility towards experts, says Tom Nichols of the U.S. Tom Nichols' The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters is a motivating - if at times slightly depressing - read. Its a great song. The professor grew up in Chicopee, Massachusetts. DEVIN STEWART: Wow. Whether McCarthy wins or loses is irrelevant. Why Monarchy Is Better For Christians than Democracy, Want to Be More Masculine? 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. Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter. [3], "These are dangerous times. The purpose of my life was to end the time I lived in., With a bit more pensiveness, Smiley adds: Or perhaps our troubles are just beginning.. I think it's okay to take stuff from Twitter. I think a good example here is the airlines. Select this result to view Tom B Nichols's phone number, address, and more. And they forget that for a lay person these are really complicated and difficult issues. Today, there is a neediness in the gun culture that speaks to deep insecurities among a certain kind of American citizen. Several years ago, Tom Nichols started writing a book about ignorance and unreason in American public discourseand then he watched it come to life all around him, in ways starker than he had imagined. Gun ownership was not the central and defining feature of their life. "DEVIN STEWART: "Nailed it. So, for those keeping tabs on tonight's @FoxNews soap opera:@BretBaier claims to read a random viewer question that links travel bans and illegal immigration@ellencarmichael admits it was her, not a random viewer i.e., a planted question, but not about immigration. When my friendsincluding the few I have left among the conservativesask what the Never Trumpers will do now, I say with all honesty that I am not sure. The US Outspends Russia 10X On Military, But They Are Equals. Some sent messages telling me that they looked forward to my official execution or other versions of my untimely death. https://t.co/urh74K6eyK. pic.twitter.com/EFrJiPntsj, Ellen Carmichael (@ellencarmichael) August 1, 2021. Its so sad that someone wouldnt assume that a mother would love her child and her in-laws so much that shed spend day and night trying to find ways to change public policy so their family can be reunited. "DEVIN STEWART: Okay, same title. Planting a question by asking it publicly on Twitter along with dozens of other people in the #LoveIsNotTourism movement. BREAKING: Defining Moment for Putin: Stand up to US/Israel Empire of Chaos, or Fold? Therefore, you're wrong about everything. I also know Ellen, and you're making an ass of yourself. https://t.co/fuiST5S7BB. Seraphim Rose, UKRAINE: Homosexual Movement Is Key to Understanding the War, I Wasn't a Debt-Free Virgin Before Marriage - Here's What I Learned the Hard Way, Russian Beauty and Christian Fashion - It's Stunning, Why Russian Women Still Cover Their Heads in Church (Hint: It's in the Bible). Some 70 percent of the public supports a pullout, something like this case during the 2011 surge. Which is why Toms making such a big deal out of it. It's a great book, and it has a funny cover too.TOM NICHOLS: I should tell you that the cover has all of these fake Twitter quotes on it. Well, let me tell you about lawyers." Naval War College, and this is a very dangerous trend. "DEVIN STEWART: And that's a fact.TOM NICHOLS: That's empirically demonstrable; 99 percent of day traders go broke.DEVIN STEWART: Going back to the U.S. foreign-policy establishment, play us through a scenario here. I am not confidently predicting victory. What to do about the deadly misfits among us? Our next-door neighbor was a police officer. The second best result is Tom Nichols age 60s in Mount Sterling, KY. But behind the scenes, that day was less dreamy than it looked. I think that Russia's larger goal is to divorce the United States from NATO and to take NATO apart. The senior figures there responded immediately. You could catch Lightyear, the perfectly functional sci-fi tale and Toy Story origin story, in theaters. Or try another recommendation from our reading list of books that reveal our anxieties about a warming planet. So I must be pretty smart at most things." It was a good question. And experts need time to talk to you, to say "These are the things you need to watch out for." They demanded my arrest. He is a professor at the U.S. | About | Contact | Investors | Crowdfunding | RSS, Why this site is the very opposite of hateful - a Christian letter to my hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Obama Would Just Look Like a Fool: Why a Putin-Obama Summit Is a Bad Idea, Young Popular Russian Priest, Murdered by Islamic Fanatic: Reminiscences and Footage, The Most Breathtaking 'Lord Have Mercy' You Have Ever Heard, Beautiful, Unearthly Hymn Chanted by Russian Orthodox Choir in Empty Church, Russian Women Always Wear Headscarves to Church. [7], Stuart Vyse in Skeptical Inquirer "strongly recommends" the book and says that "[o]ne of the best things about the book is its apolitical stance" and finds "very little to quibble with" despite having different political leanings than the author.[8]. My mother, for one. Naval War College and an adjunct at the Harvard Extension School. ), I know. Naval War College. This is very sad. You need to spend at least an hour with me"whoever the Russia expert is"before you walk into that room." https://t.co/lu8BmsoYGH. This was a war that was immensely popular at the outset and mostly conducted in full view of the American public. I happen to know the person who asked this question. I didn't say you behaved unethically, @ellencarmichael. As it turned out, even before the Breitbart story dropped, my employer had already determined that I had not violated any laws or regulations. February 23, 2023. Boys were drafted and sent into battle, sometimes in missions never intended to be revealed to the public. It's lacking senior positions; it's lacking advice. 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. The derisive way he was talking about my in-laws and implicitly, my 6-month-old daughter, is noted, though. What are some other spillover effects globally?TOM NICHOLS: That's a good question, because I was surprised. 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. I am too scarred by the horrific outcome of the 2016 election to count any chickens, no matter how alive and clucking they might seem. Tom drawing attention to the travel bans cruelty is definitely a silver lining. Toms tinfoil hat must be cutting off the circulation to his brain. There are places where we just don't know stuff.DEVIN STEWART: I think you talked about how ridiculous the day trader is in the book as an example. Or maybe such a project was impossible. TOM NICHOLS: That's where this problem of narcissism comes in, because metacognition is also a very humbling thing. The pandemic caused the biggest disruption in the history of American education. D emocracy, in its raw form, is about counting votes. His execution of this resolve, however, looks to be a tragic and shameful mess and will likely be a case study in policy schools for years to come. That's kind of weird. But I also think lay people have to let go of the kind of poisonous talk radio tropes about how experts are the enemy and mean to do you harm and are just trying to line their pockets, and to recognize that we all do live in the same community and in the same society and that we really can take expertise and common sense and wed them together to return to something like the country we used to be, I hope.DEVIN STEWART: So "be nice to one another" is ancient wisdom.TOM NICHOLS: Know thyself.DEVIN STEWART: Know thyself and be nice.TOM NICHOLS: And the Golden Rule, yes. https://t.co/SBR3v3ivV2. I believe that if all of us had caved, Trump would now be much closer to victory, not just at the polls, but over the Constitution itself. TOM NICHOLS: It was very kind of Ian to add that as well. But interestingly enough, I think, again, it's that problem of metacognition. The thing I would say about the election is that Donald Trump didn't create this hostility to experts, but boy, he surfed it beautifully. The president is talking about meeting with Putin very soon. People would say, "Well, heres what I think about arms control." I was a founding member of the band of Republican defectors known as the Never Trumpers, and one way or another, the times I have lived inthe movement to protect American democracy from Donald Trump and to stop his reelectionwill come to an end in November. 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. This kind of affirmation of cultural norms can be a lot more powerful than any law, and I suspect that the gun-culture extremists know it. (2/2). The second thing is that because lay people are so hostile to expertise, experts go into a kind of defensive crouch about ever admitting their mistakes. I want to think more about how to make this better rather than to keep plumbing the depths to find out how bad it is. I could . I know you have a tight schedule here. The fact, however, is that Europe has far more robust testing and vaccination efforts (and lower incidence of COVID) than other countries whose citizens CAN come to America, like Turkey and Indonesia. His books include The Death of Expertise and Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault From Within on Modern Democracy. Usually it is as simple as clicking on the adblock icon in your browser, and choosing the disable on this page or domain option. How Reality Dating Shows Stoke Racial Tensions. So, to recap, Baier asked a planted question, added something the person who planted it claims she didn't intend, while a friend of the planter then says she *did* intend it. Hes desperate. After Tom completed his high school education, he attended Boston University and graduated with a bachelor's degree in Political science. https://t.co/BKflCNL3L1, (Toms referring to Salena Zito, whom hes accused of fabricating sources and stories. This, apparently, somehow makes it logical to link illegal immigration with travel bans during a pandemic and not at all just the usual red-meat, nativist bullshit from Fox. Bret Baier publicly solicited questions. Because again, I think that is a place whereyou asked me earlier about mistakes that experts make, and I thinkand I will include myself in thiswe do say: "Well, you know, I'm pretty smart. First, recognize the problem. The past is the future: The song Big Iron was a hit in early 1960, but it became an internet meme thanks to Fallout New Vegas, the 2010 entry in one of the greatest science-fiction-video-game franchises of all time, the Fallout series. You would need an electron microscope to detect the effect of Afghanistan on any congressional race in the last decade, Biddle said early this year. Well, and also, that Baiee added an inflammatory linking of two issues that the original questioner says did not have in the question which that we would not have known because the question was laundered through the host.