The Pitfalls of Expertise in Modern Democracy
I was asked by my wife, who is sick of my talk about politics all the time, innocently she asked, “What makes a person with an advanced degree in politics an expert”.
What worth is a MA in Government or Political Science?
Good question.
Political Scientists were but one expert base who studied and advised about the impeachment trial.
But they were the on point expert wise no matter what side they advised on.
Go to Sacramento and you will find out what Government MA and PHDs do..
They advise legislators or they advise interest groups that is what they do.
The political system is very complicated, with law, business, education, etc etc involved.
It is not simple…It is not as Trump called it, a swamp…it is government and political and a very complicated thing: Plato first saw that.
He learned that man/women are political animals..
In fact this is absolutely true, even in your everyday life, you have to make political decisions all the time.
We just don’t call it that. And when a political thing is discussed, MAs or PHDs can go on forever.
Why? Because that is how they were trained to act.
Advanced degrees are not status badges that conceited academics get. They do serve a purpose in expertise that is used in many places in society: Education obviously, advisory to legislatures, to courts and even private business.
It’s called Pluralism, and with all of its pitfalls, is an essential ingredient in how We the People govern themselves.
We are governed by ordinary people who use experts to hopefully help them know the public good; which is always hard to define.
For a big example: Advising whether or not to convict Trump of his crimes on January 6.
We just saw, unfortunately many lawyers in the Senate, most of whom. took a class or two in Constitutional Law, the rest in Business Law; because that is where the money is.
That is why lawyers make mistakes in the government realm, because being a lawyer does NOT make you a Constitutional expert.
When I took the Law School Admission examination, I got to a question of a traffic accident and how I would solve it with the law. I had no clue…Now ask me the steps in impeachment or how a bill become a law and I am in my area of expertise.
The danger is potential dictators strive to attack experts and “draining the swamp”…making a very complicated thing into a “easy thing”…calling political attacks the swamp, is only admitting you don’t understand and/or need a political democratic system.
Politics is a complex “swamp” to be sure, democracy is not perfect to be sure, but it sure as hell beats the alternative (I think Churchilll said that).
Is it frustrating, of course. And the bigger and more complex a government gets, the more it has to rely on experts! And the more tyrants question it.
To have a lawyer, just because their are a lawyer, advise on Constitutional Law usually means hiring a PHD in Government with an emphasis in Constitutional Law. If you hire a PHD in business your are hiring someone who doesn’t really know government at all.
My MA’s emphasis is Constitutional Law. And that means I have more of an insight into political things because I studied it for years. That is all it means; it doesn’t mean I have any answers because the political realm is well…POLITICAL.
I am teaching a class in Native American Experience: Racism and Prejudice and I added FASCISM.
In the first class I added a scholarly documentary on Fascism…and I could almost feel the uncomfortable reaction
There he goes again being political.
In teaching Racism and Prejudice you HAVE to be political because that is what these two things live in. This is the swamp that Trumps likes to attack, but not in a positive way…he is fine with the political atmosphere that encourages racism and prejudice because it leads to fascism and that is the culture that has needs for power.
it does NOT mean I am always right; of course not, but it means I can give advice that is expert based.
And seeing fascism in our politics is one thing people just have to learn to look out for today!
And if you hire me as that expert, and you don’t like the advice, then you get somebody else, because politics is very confusing and complex…
It takes at least two sides in a democracy, whether it is a school board vote or a SCOTUS vote. But preserving those two sides is essential to democracy…
So that can be interpreted by a potential employer, like a Community College for example, that I can teach Political Science to college students. In full colleges with BAs, MAs, and PHD programs all of the professors usually have PhDs.
Some only MA’s but they usually are working on their PHDs.
So, the fact is if you are talking to an MA or PHd you are talking to what the public calls an expert.
Does that make the expert is right all the time; again, of course not.
Like all professions many times an issue has two or more sides to the debate. A political scientist expert can advise on these issues, which supports the democratic process, no matter how messy it seems!
There is consensus and their is a vote…Consensus is much more difficult to attain, sometimes the worst thing you can do in an organization is ask for a vote, because it has a winner and a loser. But consensus requires neither other than informed consent.
The Congress essentially had a consensus that the impeachment trial of Trump need not be lengthy for political reasons on both sides. So rather than fight it out, both sides closed the debate prematurely, leaving out critical evidence.
That is exactly what the Weimar Republic did, that is exactly what Rome did, that is exactly what Italy and even Japan did…and the results were catastrophic!
So when a person with an advanced degree goes on and on about a topic, like an impeachment, it is providing assistance to decision makers; like whether or not to vote to convict in an impeachment.
And of course, you saw sort of, both sides of the argument assisted by Political Scientists.
It’s like taking your car into service, and needing a computer expert to fix it, because it takes an expert!
This angers people without degrees for sure. They don’t trust the intelligentsia because Trump says so.
And Trump is a business major, a very lazy one it appears, whose expertise is in twisting public opinion with lies. The fact is he has advisors who somehow can support him with expert advice due to their experience and education. Sometimes he listens believe it or not, most of the time as a sociopath he only trusts himself.
And that is because in his life, his instincts are ridiculously wrong most of the time, but his lacks the self awareness as a narcissist to know the difference.
In short his instincts are usually wrong.
But to a tyrant two wrongs still make a right, because he SAYS SO!
Every day when he was president, Trump dissed experts. And his supporters, many who the digital economy had made poor and behind, were looking for someone to attack the MBA’S who advise digital business who use computer and robots who took their jobs.
It wasn’t just Democrats who caused this, it was big business, like Apple for example, that digitized the economy. So Republicans, who is usually the party they trust, actually has leaders in business who are the most influential group who were behind the “deplorable” misery!
In as sense, the authoritarian who is Trump, is actually the enemy of who he purports to oppose. In a sense he is the real enemy but hides it.
And that is classic fascist behavior!
The difference with Trump, as a fascist, is if you disagree with him, that adversely effects what he wants, you are partaking in a “witch hunt”..or the “steal”, or whatever other slur he can think up. And he will hunt your down and destroy you.
That is straight out of the dictator, fascist playbook…
Many Germans when asked why they supported Hitler said they didn’t really support him, BUT IF THEY DIDN’T ACT LKE THEY SUPPORTED HIM THEY WOULD BE TAKEN TO THE SAME CONCENTRATION CAMPS AS THE JEWS.
In effect a fascist regime turns on its supporters first to set an example of fear and get compliance or else. Fascism feeds on fear, either created by the leader or supported by his fascist followers.
“Stand up or stand by” is what Trump told the Proud Boys…They always have his back, but Trump NEVER REALLY HAS THEIR BACKS.
Hence in the early 30s Hitler purged the Brown Shirts who had helped him acquire power…once in power the fascist dictator always purges those who helped him acquire power: BECAUSE THEY KNOW THE CRIMES THAT WERE COMMITTED.
Watch as Trump throws the Proud Boys under the bus. And watch as he throws the Republican Party under the bus.
In the end it is all about him!
He sees honest debate as attack because he is a sociopath who cannot see the other side…If you oppose him you are his enemy for life…that is the biggest weakness he has. Trump, as an authoritarian is always working to make politics one sided only! All it takes is yet another Mob who finally catches on: Ask Mussolini that as he dangled from a street light with his mistress hanging next to him. Ask Stalin who was assassinated. Ask Tojo who was hung by the Allies.
The end of fascist dictators almost always means death, because that is the only thing to effectively stop them!
Biden, a classic politician, can work both sides of the isle. Trump is incapable of that. And many Republicans, who support him, have fallen into that fascist trap as well. For Trump is is all or nothing…His strength is in his ability to do what nobody else will try, and that is seen by his followers as strength. But truthfully that is the wrong way to govern.
And that makes for a dictator.
The fact is Trump was one of least qualified to be President from the beginning. He was a poor student in school, had someone take his SAT for him, never has shown his diploma from business school, he is one of the least qualified Presidents ever.
And Business majors or Masters of Business Administration has about as much to do with government as if the person has a Masters in Education, it does not qualify them for politics and democracy; that is the area of expertise for government, political scientists, etc.
Get it? If your car has a glitch that erases your speedometer, you don’t take it to a business expert, you take it to an expert mechanic and now an expert in digital speedometers. In short, cars now are rolling computers and the old days of “working on my car” are essentially over.
The more complex and scientific our lives are influence by, the more experts we need or we can’t get anything fixed. And the more ordinary middle class are left out!
Ever tried to fix your Router (what is that anyway)?
Now you don’t have to agree with an expert, so many in business get experts on the other side, to gain more information as they lobby which can morph into a plutocracy..look at Russia.
The lack of a real democratic tradition doomed Russia to despotism, even though Communism that they established in 1919, was based on democracy. Russian had zero experience in democracy…their dialectic never happened because Russian political science only knew despotism (the Czar).
That same reality doomed Germany to fascism…The Weimar Republic was doomed from the beginning because all Germany knew was a monarchy, a strong man one at that.
Russia did not have the expertise in experts in Government, especially democracy, so like Germany’s Weimar Republic it fell to the likes of Stalin, Lenin or finally Putin.
Russians think they have a parliamentary system, a democracy, but they don’t. They don’t know how!
For the past four years, America has thought the same thing. And we know better…the impeachment process proves just how circumspect we are about tyranny.
Given that, we are still flirting with it, BECAUSE ONCE AGAIN WE DIDN’T CONVICT.
So once again Trump will probably rise politically. We missed a chance to rid ourselves of him.
Why on earth you are saying, about 70% of the American People oppose him…How on earth could he rise again.
Ask Germany! Ask Russia. Both of these countries who are much older than the USA fell into the fascist trap.
Nothing guarantees that the USA can’t fall into the same trap. We saw that January 6!!!!
Fact is Trump is a plutocrat and runs the fake democratic government with a plutocratic controlled Congress like a dictatorship. He just did it for four years. For example, did the Congress vote on most of Trump’s “accomplishments in building he wall, or separating children from their families”?
No he used executive orders…that are really edicts of a strong man.
Russia is not the first country to have a fake democracy that is really authoritarian….we were for four agonizing years.
How else does a wall get built that as totally not needed? How else can a President declare war on its Congress?
What we saw during the impeachment was a bunch of lawyers presenting and defending an impeachment, and their inexperience with government showed on both sides.
And when it came to “nut cutting time” they blinked!
It was a constitutional crisis and it needed constitutional experts NOT regular lawyers to guide us through it.
Of course in the final analysis. It was a political decision that acquitted him, not a judicial one…and that is the way impeachment works. Most of the lawyers where speaking from business and criminal law, NOT Constitutional Law. But this did not guarantee making a mistake.
And the Senate made a huge mistake in not convicting Trump.
We just saw a big mistake being made politically…Trump will rise again, and it will further split the Republican Party.
Only this time to stop him could mean Civil War…
The Democrats did use video evidence with punishing results; very compelling, but the first thing the other side claimed was the evidence could never be evidence because to build that in a court of law you need witnesses. Incredibly the lawyers, remember most who have little political experience, decided to short change the impeachment process, Republicans to defend their leader, Democrats who want to not hinder their Biden’s agenda with a long political fight.
All good excuses; all fraught with danger for democracy. Why, because Trump doesn’t play by those rules, he plays by his own. And for four years he got away with it!
He always gets away with it!
We just allowed a traitor to go free…and one with a vindictive streak and an unlimited check book.
But Democrats decided early on, and almost change their mind, to let the video be the witnesses, because they KNEW they didn’t have the votes to convict.
So they tried Trump in the court of public opinion and the Republicans were in on it as well.
And that was a big gamble, the wrong gamble, because Trump won’t give up.
What may be coming next is a criminal indictment (which by the way has problems because he isn’t President anymore) claiming Trump allegedly broke criminal law, especially to do with voting rights law; corrupting the electoral process with violence, or better still, calling the head of Georgia’s voting system and demanded he find so many votes.. That is criminal interference in an election and should wind up in a criminal indictment. And Trump’s defense, classic Executive Privilege…which you cannot usually punish criminally. All Trump has to say is his perspective as President was that the election was rigged and his could take reasonable action to prove it…which gets us back to January 6.
And then criminal and government legal expertise will be on point as they call it. The political remedy for dictatorship just failed, it remains to be seen if the criminal remedy will work to save us. And the only way to stop and authoritarian is jail or death.
This thing is not over!