Little did Carmichael realize when she asked that question that she was about to kick the mother of all hornets nests. We believed otherwise, as a nation, because we wanted to believe it. Looking at what we have in office and the whole spectrum, what could possibly go wrong?TOM NICHOLS: Let's just stipulate that World War III is the worst thing that can go wrong. Well, that phenomenon actually has a scientific basis called the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is that the people who are the least competent at something have the greatest tendency to overestimate their competence at it.DEVIN STEWART: That's because they lack the intelligence to be self-aware?TOM NICHOLS: They lack a particular skill called metacognition, which is the ability to step back and see that you're doing something poorly. What are they saying?TOM NICHOLS: They mostly are from professionals. We are all in this miserable, frustrating boat. Right on brand -all sides of an issue. So when Fox News Bret Baier solicited questions on Twitter for his interview with CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, Carmichael offered up a question about the travel restrictions: Tonight on #SpecialReport Ill sit down with @CDCDirector Dr. Rochelle Walensky & Im looking for your questions. What to do about the deadly misfits among us? People always freak out about plane crashes, and understandably so. Were at war. Stop using me to make a point about Fox. Tom Nichols was born on 7th December 1960. I have always trusted my fellow citizens with weapons. I did get onea story I always tell out here on the roadfrom a molecular biologist in France, saying "thank you," and I thought, Wow! Gun ownership was not the central and defining feature of their life. I closed my blog as a way of showing everybody that you don't have to express every thought that goes through your head. Think about the American foreign policy establishment. My question is, who are the Russia people? Liberal democracy is about much more than that. "[6], Joshua Huminski of the Diplomatic Courier described the book as "timely", citing Donald Trump's statements on climate change and Pew Research surveys regarding genetically modified organisms. https://t.co/urh74K6eyK. What difference would it have made if @BretBaier identified her as a political consultant? And if the Trump administration is saying, "Well, we're all a bunch of smart guys who made a million dollars in Goldman Sachs or real estate; how hard can running Syria policy be?" I'm pretty good at what I do. What I do know is that, regardless of what any one of us does individually, two aspects of the Never Trump movement will outlast Trump. Watch. He weaponized it politically in the same way that the Brexiteers did in England and the United Kingdom where they took a lot of folks who had generalized anger and anxiety about globalization and about the nature of the world, and they turned it into a vote that I think has already produced a hangover setting in Great Britain. Who needs experts? Tom Nichols is a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. PissedOffLawyer (@PissedOffLawyer) July 31, 2021. Honestly, I just assume that many declines in the quality of American life for the foreseeable future will be announced with In a 63 decision Elections have consequences, and with the current composition of the Court, this decision was inevitable. He has served as a legislative aide in the Massachusetts House and the U.S. Senate. As big an ass as I would be if I planted a question on a news show and then ratted out the host who made it seem like a random viewer for making the question seem nastier than the one I planted? For those keeping tabs on Tom Nichols, hes creepily fixated on a woman who wants her family to stop being kept apart by arbitrary rules with no scientific basis. Period. And now those same Americans have the full withdrawal from Afghanistan they apparently want: Some 70 percent of the public supports a pullout. TOM NICHOLS: Same title. That's kind of weird. Have you seen Breitbart? a colleague asked. Boys were drafted and sent into battle, sometimes in missions never intended to be revealed to the public. Then, that summer, I wrote a piece on how I became a Never Trumper for The New York Times Magazine. We were facing real risk, and I wanted to know their feelings. While some lost money, all lost friends. The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters is a 2017 nonfiction book by Tom Nichols.It is an expansion of a 2014 article published in The Federalist.. Summary. There are places where we just don't know stuff.DEVIN STEWART: I think you talked about how ridiculous the day trader is in the book as an example. Not that they care that intensely about it; as the foreign-policy scholar Stephen Biddle recently observed, the war is practically an afterthought in U.S. politics. Thanks for watching https://t.co/T20oaSSrHq. Foxes have a very broad knowledge; hedgehogs have a very deep but narrow knowledge. Naval War College. That summer, I sat down with my wife and members of my family. https://t.co/dEoyBoLbaP, I tweeted him as the mother of a 6-month-old whose European relatives cannot come to America to see her. Students should not decide a colleges curriculum. Courage exercised only when the coast is clear is not courage; it is opportunism. Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 21, 2023 Tom wrote a whole thread about how people in East Jesus, USA, are obsessed with people like him, because Tom doesn't care what people in East. In the author's words, his goal . I happen to know the person who asked this question. Republican political consultant Ellen Carmichael is one of many Americans struggling to understand the scientific reasoning behind that decision. "DEVIN STEWART: You talk about how this kind of plays out at dinner parties, where the least informed are the loudest. The future of the world order is at stake. How should we be thinking about what comes next? The second best result is Tom Nichols age 60s in Mount Sterling, KY. As is Tom drawing attention to his awfulness its important that as many people as possible realize what kind of person he is. Another example I can give you is when I went to a golf coach once. The review goes on to cite Nichols' author notes as one of the highlights of the volume as it points the reader to "more illuminating books and articles. Tom Nichols dissects the dangerous antipathy to expertise. Today, there is a neediness in the gun culture that speaks to deep insecurities among a certain kind of American citizen. Apr 22 Replying to @RadioFreeTom Leave out the lamb and we're good to go! He is a professor at the U.S. How hard can this be?" I have made my case against the president loudly and clearly. 20th-century Greek American writers (2 P) Pages in category "American writers of Greek descent" . Biden was right, in the end, to bite the bullet and refuse to pass this conflict on to yet another president. But yes, you're the victim here, not the viewers who had no idea they were getting played by @FoxNews. Why? This is why, when Trump is gone (whether after this election or in 2024), I will continue to oppose everyone who had anything to do with inflicting this scar on American history, long after the members of the Trump family are finally bankrupt, in rehab, in jail, or living in seclusion in Manhattan among the neighbors who already despise them. After the worst attack on U.S. soil, Americans had no real interest in adult conversation about the reality of anti-terrorist operations in so harsh an environment as Afghanistan (which might have entailed a presence there long beyond 20 years), nor did they want to think about whether draining the swamp and modernizing and developing Afghanistan (which would mean a lot more than a few elections) was worth the cost and effort. I used to think this was just a local phenomenon, but as it turns out, when the first article I wrote on this got published I started getting letters from all over the world, and Im starting to think it's a developed-world phenomenon. Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) April 5, 2021 Well, yes actually, DeSantis was the victim of a lie broadcast to millions of people and amplified by Nichols himself. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and he is author of The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters. My hometown was a military town, and almost all of the men I knew were veterans who owned weapons and knew how to handle them. I think it has to do with a sense of personal empowerment, of universal education, of course the presence of the Internet, and the segmenting of the global media into niche publications. Joseph Gleason Immediately After Ecumenism Came Homosexuality by Archpriest Theodore Zisis That's really the lesson of that book. My God, hes STILL talking about me because I had the nerve to publicly tweet a question about the EU travel ban that deeply affects my family to a reporter who was asking the CDC director questions from viewers. Flipboard. And that had really just been a kind ofI don't have a blog anymore because I think blogs are part of the problem in the modern world. It was the angry-old-man-yelling-at-clouds piece that I wrote, and that turned into the article that eventuallyOxford [University Press] actually came to me about the book because I wasn't sure that there was that broad an audience for it until the piece went viral. His execution of this resolve, however, looks to be a tragic and shameful mess and will likely be a case study in policy schools for years to come. So I must be pretty smart at most things." I want to think more about how to make this better rather than to keep plumbing the depths to find out how bad it is. But before we move on, before we head back to the mall, before we resume posting memes, and before we return to bickering with each other about whether we should have to mask up at Starbucks, let us remember that this day came about for one reason, and one reason only. He writes about international security, nuclear weapons, Russia, and the challenges to democracy in the United States and around the worldalong with occasional contrarian views on popular culture. Usually it is as simple as clicking on the adblock icon in your browser, and choosing the disable on this page or domain option. BREAKING: Defining Moment for Putin: Stand up to US/Israel Empire of Chaos, or Fold? Who are the experts who are laying out the possible snares and traps here to warn the president about "This is what it's like to talk to the Russians; these are the things"? Tom Nichols ( @RadioFreeTom) is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, a professor at the U.S. By Tom Nichols Vladimir Putin during his briefing after the State Council meeting at the Grand Kremlin Palace on December 22, 2022 ( Getty) February 21, 2023 This is an edition of The Atlantic. DEVIN STEWART: Is there a danger that Russia might take advantage of perceived ignorance in the White House, like Khrushchev did with Kennedy?TOM NICHOLS: I have that fear very strongly. Can you explain that phenomenon? Have just been notified that hes on day 3 of talking about me #BloomWhereYoureLaunderedandPlanted pic.twitter.com/MUv15aMssw, Ellen Carmichael (@ellencarmichael) August 2, 2021. "TOM NICHOLS: Right. (1/2) https://t.co/2BfNkuAtao, I didnt bring up illegal immigration. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. I was at my churchs annual Greek festival, about to grab some souvlaki and baklava with my young daughter, when my phone rang. 170 East 64th Street I think that's where experts also get into trouble; we can be overly directive. "Well, of course, North Korea is like this," or "Of course, global climate change looks like that," or "Of course, macroeconomics, how can you be so stupid as to not understand that?" I didn't say you behaved unethically, @ellencarmichael. Whether it is Nikki Haley or Tom Cotton running for president or Foxs prime-time lineup bolstering Trumps underlings, for as long as I have a public platform, I will contend that these are people who betrayed the principles of our system of government for their own gain and that my fellow citizens should refuse to give them votes or ratings. When U.S. forces had to endure the misery of the retreat from North Korea back to the 38th parallel, no one made the argument that it had happened because of the voters. The speaker pays off his debts to the extremist base. My tweet had a ton of replies from other #LoveIsNotTourism families asking, too. https://t.co/FFboS7AVzl, Ellen Carmichael (@ellencarmichael) July 31, 2021. Tom Nichols is author of The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters. Because again, I think that is a place whereyou asked me earlier about mistakes that experts make, and I thinkand I will include myself in thiswe do say: "Well, you know, I'm pretty smart. They don't have to tell you what to do. The Supreme Court has now affirmed that all these guys can be the handsome ranger with the Big Iron on their hip. A win in the Supreme Court for the American right to threaten one another in public. He blames trends in higher education (such as . What are some other spillover effects globally?TOM NICHOLS: That's a good question, because I was surprised. But behind the scenes, that day was less dreamy than it looked. It's great. The pandemic caused the biggest disruption in the history of American education. Kristi Noem going to Sturgis while Kabul falls so here it is Rep. Adam Schiff takes to TikTok to cry about being kicked off the. Donald Trump didn't create this, but he certainly weaponized it politically, just as Brexiteers did in the UK. It concerns me because I think people misunderstand those previous examples of the failure of expertise. Over time, my critics moved on to various other charges, including that I was personally unfit to associate with officers of the U.S. military, that I was an agent of the deep state, and even that I was a Russian asset and therefore a security risk. [Editor's note: See H.R. He said point-blank: "The experts are no good. A lot of folks have asked me if I wrote this about the election, and I really didn't; this goes back about three-and-a-half years, to early 2014. Its a great song. we're going to run right back into that same problem we ran into in the 1960s.DEVIN STEWART: That's a very subtle and important nuance there.TOM NICHOLS: Absolutely.DEVIN STEWART: The clich is "a little bit of knowledge is very dangerous. Updated 11:55 a.m. on Jan. 21. Americas not at war was a common refrain among the troops. I think most people don't want to do that second part. Do they have a point?TOM NICHOLS: Sure.DEVIN STEWART: What is the point?TOM NICHOLS: Look, we live in a world that moves pretty fast. D emocracy, in its raw form, is about counting votes. And that's what the Dunning-Kruger study managed to finally prove, is that the people who are the least intelligent or least aware of, again, where the envelope is, are the most likely to walk off and say, "Nailed it. I am too scarred by the horrific outcome of the 2016 election to count any chickens, no matter how alive and clucking they might seem. The problem is not the Courts decision. Disgusting. The second thing is that because lay people are so hostile to expertise, experts go into a kind of defensive crouch about ever admitting their mistakes. Like many famous people and celebrities, Tom Nichols keeps his personal life private. These late conversions to opposing Trump mean nothing, at least to me. https://t.co/lu8BmsoYGH. DEVIN STEWART: Maybe they didn't have the word "metacognition," but they were onto TOM NICHOLS: It didn't rhyme with anything. In the meantime, American citizens will separate into their usual camps and identify all of the obvious causes and culprits except for one: themselves. By Tom Nichols Hulton Archive / Getty; The Atlantic. Just because Tom Nichols doesn't care doesn't mean no one else does. They're foxes because theyre more willing to admit when they're wrong and they're more willing to integrate new information. Meh. They kind of godfathered the concept, and they've supported the book to the hilt out there as it has been released, so I've been really grateful to them as well.DEVIN STEWART: It's got an endorsement from our friend Ian Bremmer on the back. So, for those keeping tabs on tonight's @FoxNews soap opera:@BretBaier claims to read a random viewer question that links travel bans and illegal immigration@ellencarmichael admits it was her, not a random viewer i.e., a planted question, but not about immigration. https://t.co/6pal9O1VvQ, Hi, @ellencarmichael. What did strike me is that I was taken by surprise at how global the reaction was. People who have talked about talking to him just say it's impossible to brief him because he just doesn't have a very long attention span. I wouldnt wish this situation on my worst enemy. If we were sitting here a year ago, wed be looking at Brexit; wed be looking at the rise of Marine Le Pen; wed be looking at these populist movements in Europe, all of which seem to have pretty much burned themselves out within a year. A political scientist who has taught for more than a decade in the Harvard . Continuing to write about Trump could mean serious financial hardship. America Is 'Committing Suicide' By Allowing Trannies in the Military (Russian TV News). Brexit, I guess, is going to happen, but you already see that they are stumbling toward it. Back in 1959, the country singer Marty Robbins wrote a ballad about a murderous outlaw who met his well-deserved end at the hands of a handsome young Arizona Ranger who was carrying the Big Iron on his hip. (The song was supposedly inspired by a weapon Robbins saw in a shop, but there is some question about whether the Big Iron was a real gun.). So I think it's a lack of empathy, and that many of them are not particularly good teachers. Several years ago, Tom Nichols started writing a book about ignorance and unreason in American public discourseand then he watched it come to life all around him, in ways starker than he had imagined. I think the Russians will try to manipulate the White House into moving further and further away from NATO, perhaps without the White House even realizing that that's what is happening, because the Russians are way better at this game than anybody in Washington in power right now. Make some popcorn and get comfortable as he burns down billions of .