Expert terror

You know what scares me more than anything else? Experts. Lord knows we got enough of them. Some of them have respectable credentials. Most of them are only self-proclaimed. Yeah, that's one of the risks you take when living in an age when any opinion is as good as any other. That's where we are, aren't we? Yeah, unfortunately. Well, that's how we wanted it.

Our real problem is that we can pick and choose what we want to believe. It's not a matter of accepting any more. It's not a matter of the better argument, the more valid research, the more reliable information ... no, it's all about belief. We've long outdone the early Middle Ages, the Pre-Renaissance ... we're way past that. We're so much smarter than any of those poor misguided souls could have hoped to be. Yep, universal education, and not a bright person in the house. Should one actually show up, s/he'll get shouted down by the masses faster than you can say "liberal educated elite".

Me? I think we get what we deserve. We don't want it any different than we have it. If things don't work, it's really because we don't want things to work. C'mon ... gridlock is much more interesting than actually solving a problem. Holding to your hokey principles is much more important than actually making the world a better place. No, me? I have no sympathy for anybody anymore. Oh sure, I'm depressed by the fact that there are more have-nots than there ever will be haves. I'm bothered by the fact that too few take too much for themselves and are willing to leave the rest behind. I'm disturbed by how widespread true ignorance is. But, I can't say that I'm all upset about it. I figure is the systems doesn't work any more, feed it. It'll implode. It has to.

As a matter of fact, I actually think we're moving to a new level of crime ... not ignorance: that' been around long enough, and it has tradition, in fact. (If you don't believe me, try reading Hofstader's Anti-intellectualism in American Life (if you can get past your own anti-intellectual prejudices that is) for a cogent portrayal of a phenomenon that has been going on much longer than any of us can afford.) No, we are, I believe, moving from crimes of now to crimes against the future. They're not new, of course, but they are becoming ever more evident.