I fully expect to come back to this post with plenty of Lemmy-tastic comments along the lines of “The people are tired of experts”, but left-leaning instead of right.
This is obvious bait, but I’ll bite a little.
The real experts, that sound the alarm and call us to action, are largely silenced or ignored. These people are not in leadership or positions that hold any meaningful power or influence. Our actual leadership is mostly unqualified and playing team politics and tug of war while nothing gets done and the plane crashes.
Can you blame people for raising their hands and suggesting that the pilots, who are crashing the plane through their apathy and inaction, be removed?
Direct democracy would be a wonderful concept for humanity to explore. And the experts who are on the side of progress should be allowed to spearhead initiatives to solve the various crises our species and planet faces.
The real experts, that sound the alarm and call us to action, are largely silenced or ignored. These people are not in leadership or positions that hold any meaningful power or influence. Our actual leadership is mostly unqualified and playing team politics and tug of war while nothing gets done and the plane crashes.
Yeah, but I’m not talking about people being dissatisfied with political leadership. I’m talking about the widespread rejection of experts themselves.
People voting against evidence-based policy and politicians are just a symptom of that more fundamental issue.
People just aren’t buying appeals to authority anymore. They are demanding more.
In the US, people just don’t seem to trust the status quo. The government is very, very corrupt and has been for a long time. Corporations are shady and many have been implicated in some pretty damning controversies that have affected our health with relatively little consequence. Regulation essentially doesn’t exist.
If experts explained why certain “controversial” things are safe and laid out the science and reasoning, a lot of these concerns would likely vanish.
But, we generally don’t address concerns, even concerns that seem fairly legitimate to the people that hold them. We attack these people, calling them names - effectively pushing them further down their rabbit holes. Plenty stand to profit off of their fears and encourage their (potentially dangerous) perspectives.
And we definitely don’t address legitimate concerns properly (from experts or otherwise), which adds fuel to the fire (and adds legitimacy to these bad actors who are quick to point out these issues) and more trustworthy sources are silent.
This is all a failure of media, government, leadership, and education. I reason that distrust in experts is a symptom of those failures.
“But, we generally don’t address concerns, even concerns that seem fairly legitimate to the people that hold them.”
Have to disagree with this. Most don’t want or care to know or find the truth. They just want to feel right. It’s about emotions for most people, not logic. And trolls who promote conservative talking points feed into it.
