I fully expect to come back to this post with plenty of Lemmy-tastic comments along the lines of “The people are tired of experts”, but left-leaning instead of right.
I fully expect to come back to this post with plenty of Lemmy-tastic comments along the lines of “The people are tired of experts”, but left-leaning instead of right.
Yeah, but I’m not talking about people being dissatisfied with political leadership. I’m talking about the widespread rejection of experts themselves.
People voting against evidence-based policy and politicians are just a symptom of that more fundamental issue.
People just aren’t buying appeals to authority anymore. They are demanding more.
In the US, people just don’t seem to trust the status quo. The government is very, very corrupt and has been for a long time. Corporations are shady and many have been implicated in some pretty damning controversies that have affected our health with relatively little consequence. Regulation essentially doesn’t exist.
If experts explained why certain “controversial” things are safe and laid out the science and reasoning, a lot of these concerns would likely vanish.
But, we generally don’t address concerns, even concerns that seem fairly legitimate to the people that hold them. We attack these people, calling them names - effectively pushing them further down their rabbit holes. Plenty stand to profit off of their fears and encourage their (potentially dangerous) perspectives.
And we definitely don’t address legitimate concerns properly (from experts or otherwise), which adds fuel to the fire (and adds legitimacy to these bad actors who are quick to point out these issues) and more trustworthy sources are silent.
This is all a failure of media, government, leadership, and education. I reason that distrust in experts is a symptom of those failures.
“But, we generally don’t address concerns, even concerns that seem fairly legitimate to the people that hold them.”
Have to disagree with this. Most don’t want or care to know or find the truth. They just want to feel right. It’s about emotions for most people, not logic. And trolls who promote conservative talking points feed into it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmVkJvieaOA
It’s fair to point out that people lean towards emotions, but I’d argue those emotions aren’t always invalid at their root.
I think most of the issues with potentially dangerous viewpoints lie in the inherent polarization and untrustworthiness of media. Even the sources seen as most trustworthy omit key facts and relevant details.
News isn’t news. It’s become entertainment and what amounts to corporate propaganda. All of these organizations are attempting to get clicks and engagement as their primary focus. Tribalism, fear, and hate are frequently invoked, politics and bias is enmeshed with reporting, critical thinking and discernment isn’t encouraged (which is also a failing of education), and gaslighting has arguably become a profession. Critical and divergent perspectives are generally suppressed or smeared, as well.
I understand why people turn away from liberal sources. I also understand how people get stuck in conservative echo-chambers. Hate, distrust, and concern are usually the emotions at the root of one’s engagement with conservative or conspiratorial sources. These organizations and influential conservative individuals appeal to these people’s vulnerabilities and latch on. They are confident, they are emotional and passionate, and they are seen as more grounded than more reliable sources.
It’s a form of radicalization - these people may have some good reasons to not trust authorities, but it’s all effectively lost to them once they are immersed in the slop they tune into.
We need to repair trust and restore sanity to our institutions and positions of leadership. Things just aren’t working in our society. I think it’s imperative that we separate news and entertainment, improve our education system, increase accessibility of higher education, and make government more transparent.
Easy to say but I have yet to hear a solution.
I’d argue that aside from the current president those institutions and positions leadership have been generally trustworthy and sane. Nixon violated that trust but he also accepted accountability and resigned. Reagan get a lot of blame from liberals, maybe I fell for his line, but he seemed to act in what he thought were the best interest of the country. Or at least claimed so. Recent Dem administrations have been at most ineffective.
I’d argue that most of the damage to trust and sanity has been caused by external forces like “the other side”, the death of News, and partisan clickbait. Even the echo chambers radicalizing so many wouldn’t succeed if there were a trusted News source, and if it wasn’t constantly being fed by radical politics.
It’s not a lack of trustworthiness or sanity, but the impression of. Sure there are things that could be done to better one’s position but you can never compete with distrust sown from outside. We need a way to moderate the externalities that we by definition have no control over.
I disagree. The situation here in America is quite insane.
Off the top of my head: microplastics/PFAS contamination in and around our food/etc. and response has been very lackluster (and many individuals likely don’t follow best practices to avoid microplastic leaching and to avoid contaminating their food with the chemicals found in non-stick surfaces), there’s a fresh water shortage crisis that we are unprepared to deal with, there is widespread PFAS contamination and other contamination of our fresh water, contaminated biosolids are being using to fertilize crops and are causing PFAS contamination of soil, water, and agriculture, fracking has the potential to contaminate groundwater and air and the practice is supported by politicians on both sides (see the EPA’s final assessment, and look at places affected like Dimock, PA), there are many instances of toxic dumping by corporations with no response or remediation (e.g. by Tyson).
Some crises are more reported on than others, but it’s pretty clear our country’s water supply is overwhelmingly in jeopardy, with only about 100 chemicals regulated out of many thousands (e.g. see the EWG’s reporting on this issue). Our food quality is generally in the gutter and is in desperate need of regulation and we also have a topsoil crisis.
We also generally have a health care crisis, a housing/homelessness crisis, we have an economy that doesn’t work for the majority of Americans, 1/3 of Americans don’t vote in the presidential election and are disenfranchised or politically apathetic, and the list goes on.
News organizations, and the experts that are generally put forward, only seem to care about maintaining positive public perception of authority and governance - likely to maintain public order. There are plenty of experts who are sounding the alarm or are working diligently to address these issues, but these people usually aren’t the same people that are on mainstream news telling us everything is okay.
And I disagree with your assertion that American leadership, particularly the presidency, has been trustworthy or sane across the decades. There are so many points I could argue, but at this point I’ve already spent too much energy on this response and we likely just don’t see eye-to-eye on these issues - which is fine. I could elaborate further, but I feel there are many others better equipped to comprehensively critique recent presidents.