No Wonder We Lost Trust in the Expert Class

For years, European policymakers had assured the world that the relatively rapid “transition” to “green” energy was the world’s preordained future—regardless of the costs.

Many European Union governments have followed the green experts’ advice. They eagerly shut down coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants to transition immediately to “renewable energy.”
Most citizens were afraid to object that in cloudy, cold Germany solar panels were not viable methods of electrical generation—especially in comparison to the country’s vast coal deposits and its large, model nuclear power industry.

As a result, German government officials warn that this winter, in 19th-century fashion, families will have to burn wood — the dirtiest of modern fuels—to endure the cold. And there is further talk of “warm rooms,” where like pre-civilizational tribal people, the elderly will bunch together within a designated heated room to keep alive.

Sri Lanka may have been the first modern nation that has adopted deliberate policies that have led mass hunger and bankruptcy. The government listened to the foreign advocates of back–to-nature organic farming. This included the complete abandonment of highly effective synthetic pesticides.
The result was endemic crop loss. Export cash crops failed. Widespread hunger followed. It became impossible to import essential staples such as food and fuel without foreign currency.

Sri Lanka had a per-capita income that was twice that of India. It cannot now feed or fuel itself.
Unfortunately, the government was incompetent and trusted radical environmental experts, many of which were foreigners. Sri Lanka believed it could become the woke darling of the “Environmental, Social, Governance” movement, and in that way draw in unlimited Western woke investment.

Instead, it has adopted a national suicide policy.

Recently, a group of 55 distinguished pro-administration economists assured us that President Joe Biden’s massive borrowing and new entitlements agenda were not inflationary. In September 2021, these economists with 14 Nobel prize winners among them declared that Biden’s inflationary policies would actually “ease” inflation.

Inflation rose to 9.1% annually last month.

None of these “blue-chip” economists have offered any apologies for lending their prestige to convince Americans of the absurd: that inflating the money supply, spiking new government spending, incentivizing labor non-participation, and keeping interest rates artificially low would not cause inflation.
In late July 2021, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, claimed that the Taliban takeover “was not a foregone conclusion.” He bragged that 34 provincial capitals were still in Afghan government hands.

Lloyd Austin, Defense Secretary nodded in approval. The entire Afghan government collapsed less than a month later. In its most humiliating retreat in over 50-years, the American military fled Afghanistan. Milley had been parroting Biden’s earlier prompt that a Taliban victory after the American evacuation was “highly unlikely.”

On the eve of the 2020 election, news accounts revealed some of the lurid contents on Hunter Biden’s lost laptop. Emails and photos began to incriminate all members of the Biden family for using millions of dollars from foreign royalty to gain access to a purchased Joe Biden.

Fifty retired intelligence officers, however, without evidence, swore that the laptop’s appearance could be due to “Russian disinformation.” Yet after authentication—Hunter himself never denied the lost laptop was his—few if any of those marquee “experts” apologized for their election-driven dissimulation.
At the height of the massive 2020 enforced quarantine and lockdowns, some 1,200 medical and health “professionals” signed a petition claiming that thousands of left-wing protestors should be exempt from the very quarantine they had insisted on for others.

Experts absurdly claimed that denying thousands of people the right to protest in the streets was a greater health risk than COVID-19.

FBI Director James Comey doggedly pursued the “Russian collusion” hoax. He once hired Christopher Steele, discredited, to provide FBI information from his fantasy dossier.
Comey was once called to account on 245 occasions before Congress. He claimed that he could not recall or had no knowledge of the questions.

Andrew McCabe, his successor as FBI interim director, admitted to lying on four occasions to federal officials. Special counsel and former FBI director Robert Mueller himself swore under oath that he knew nothing either about the Steele dossier or Fusion GPS—the twin catalysts for his entire investigation.
Kevin Clinesmith, an FBI lawyer, admitted to altering a federal court record in an effort to convict an innocent suspect.

These depressing examples all have one thing in common: Elite experts and professionals with degrees manipulated their knowledge to serve ideological masters rather than the truth.
They did irreparable damage to their country, and their fellow citizens. They disgraced their profession. They were a disgrace to the scientific community. They sold their souls to ideologues.
Is it any wonder that the Western public has lost faith in the credentialed and educated elites?

(C)2022 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The Daily Signal is open to all perspectives. Nothing here should be taken to mean that The Heritage Foundation views are represented.

Do you have a comment about this article? Send an email to let us know your opinion. letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Be sure to include the article’s URL, headline, and your name.