During and since the 2016 campaign, there have been moments where knowing what one is talking about simply wasn’t required or even expected. For example, health care: A recent poll by Morning Consult found that 35 percent of respondents said either they thought Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act were different policies or they just weren’t sure. Asked what would happen if Obamacare were repealed, 45 percent did not know it meant that the A.C.A. would be repealed. In other words, they became even more confused about the same basic information or set of facts when the question was phrased differently. Their understanding of the health care law was spectacularly fuzzy and wildly inconsistent.
And here are two more inconvenient facts from the Pew Research Center: A quarter of Americans do not know which gas is the majority ingredient of our planet’s atmosphere, and over half do not know what gas is a primary contributor to climate change. While that is a subject for another posting, these are facts that are actually pretty important. Why? We just live here, folks.
In the recent debacle over repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act in Congress, it became clear that many, including those elected to office to represent their constituents’ interests, fail to understand that repealing major portions of “Obamacare” would cause about 24 million Americans to lose their health care. Anyone with a basic knowledge of ACA and health care in general would know that it's a complex, challenging issue. But 45 said “Nobody knew health care was so complicated.” Actually, competent, knowledgeable people knew. Even folks who were not “experts” knew it wasn’t simple.
It seems that many in the current administration believe that expertise and ignorance do not matter. Benjamin Wittes, considered a legal expert by legal experts (but maybe that doesn’t mean anything these days) described the two executive orders banning persons from 6, and 7, countries as reading like they were “not reviewed by competent counsel at all," and “malevolence tempered by incompetence.” As described by Rachel Maddow, the persons who put these orders together did not know what they were doing. Further, the current president relied on a NSA adviser who worked as a foreign agent for several other countries and retweeted conspiracy theories (until he was fired), and a White House senior advisor who has promoted a white nationalist agenda and racist, bigoted news articles on a right wing news site. The hearings for Betsy DeVos revealed her to be ignorant of fundamental concepts and issues in education. Following massive purges and the gutting of the budget at State Department (and career diplomats summarily dismissed from their posts—apparently experience also does not matter anymore), those running the show today struggle to help a hapless White House get foreign leaders’ names right (The Prime Ministers of Japan and Britain, for example).
Paul Krugman sums it up this way:
“Competent lawyers might tell you that your Muslim ban is unconstitutional; competent scientists that climate change is real; competent economists that tax cuts don’t pay for themselves; competent voting experts that there weren’t millions of illegal ballots; competent diplomats that…Putin is not your friend. So competence must be excluded.”
But if they’re such accidental, or possibly, deliberate ignoramuses, then why does the GOP control the White House and both houses of Congress? As Krugman suggests, a significant portion of the contemporary electorate carries contempt for well-educated “elitists.” As 45 tweets his own disdain for “so-called” judges, “so-called” scientists ("climate change is a hoax"), and “so-called” experts, his supporters nod their heads in agreement. Many hold outright hostility toward highly educated people who assert that tweets, legislation, and public policy “should be based on careful study and thought.”
On social media at the peak of the election season, this kind of anti-intellectualism was rampant. My persistent insistence that people should know some basic facts, and reminders to folks of racist, bigoted statements that had been typed that very day on a thread, sometimes precipitated howls of denials, and accusations of “reverse racism” and “elitism”: “You sound like an elitist, Kyle.” With great amusement, I read one stranger’s comments on Facebook that having a Ph.D. didn’t mean one was knowledgeable, well educated, or qualified in one’s area of study. It just meant a person was able to “pass some tests.” I guess that’s like saying the Pope is just a “sort of religious” guy who memorized some Biblical verses. Or a mathematician just knows how to use a calculator. Or a quarterback with five Super Bowl rings "just knows how to throw a football."
I worry that the profound ignorance, gross incompetence and anti-intellectualism of the current administration is a terrible model for a citizenry already thinking it’s alright to not know facts, and to not know what they’re talking about (see my previous post). But it isn’t all bad: The called-off vote for the D.O.A. TrumpCare bill gave 24 million Americans a reprieve from losing their health care coverage. More people will live as a result. The immigration executive orders are so poorly written that states and circuit courts can block them by just knowing what they’re talking about. And while the White House and its Press Secretary continue to come across as clueless, vacillating between incompetence and malfeasance, as 45’s job approval ratings have sunk to 37 percent. But I am still worried, because this means that over a third of the population still approve. That’s a lot of people who don’t hold their elected leaders to basic standards of knowledge, intellectual curiosity, and the self-discipline necessary for due diligence. This begs another question: Do they have any expectations at all, and how would they begin to hold their leaders to those expectations, going forward? I for one would like articulate, knowledgeable, intellectually curious, and non-ethically challenged persons representing me as my government officials. Anything wrong with that?
Kyle D. Killian, PhD is author of from Columbia University Press.