Reply to Name 2 things about the USA you don’t like

Forum Index » Off-Topic

Reply to "Name 2 things about the USA you don’t like"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Mistrust of or irrelevance of scientific and technical expertise by/to the average American. Anti-intellectualism celebrated "trust my gut" "common sense"

All else stems from this
[/quote]

This. The pride that people take in their ignorance is disgusting. I don't get down on people for being uneducated-- education = privilege, after all-- but I have pure contempt for people who brag about it. [/quote]

The "educated" people proclaiming the wisdom of science and technical expertise have proven to be wrong many, many, many times. A lot of what we were initially told about COVID, to use one example, turned out to be distorted, often deliberately, or just plain old wrong. A lot about COVID we were told was also very true. But we can't overlook that too many people seized the authority in the name of science and education when they shouldn't have done so, or tried to turn science into morality of some kind and used it to lecture people as if they were a priest in some kind of temple, passing wisdom on hot button cultural topics, and in the process created an enormous amount of distrust for institutional knowledge. And unfortunately, it's well-deserved distrust. Reap what ye sow.

I'll admit to automatically being skeptical whenever I hear the word "expert" tossed about, which must be one of the most overused words out there. And I have advanced degrees from elite institutions. If we're going to add something to the list of what we don't like about the US, it's the American expert classes usurping a certain kind of self-declared moral authority that is not done in the same way in many other peer countries.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics