The peculiar arrogance of ignorance
I was watching Paul Bremer on Charlie Rose last night, and Rose asked if Bremer would have had an easier time of administering Iraq if he'd been an expert on Iraq, or an Arabist. To quote Bremer's response as accurately as I can, "Sure, it would have made it easier. But it would've made it harder in some ways, too: a lot of the experts were skeptical about our ability to succeed [in establishing a stable democracy] over there."
That, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly what's wrong with Bush, his administration, the Republican Party, and the persons who vote for its candidates: a profound, almost pathological anti-intellectualism.
I mean, if experts are warning you against a given action in a field in which they are expert, shouldn't you listen to them? You can read my thoughts on the probability of success in our current efforts in Iraq here. With all due respect to Mr. Bremer, with my MA in History, I know a hell of a lot more about the history of foreign interventions in West Asia than he or, it would seem, just about anybody making actual decisions about our policy in Iraq. And I'm hardly an expert.
Pick any complex issue, and you'll find that the Republicans (of whom I have a frighteningly representative microcosm in my parents) are likely rejecting the word of academicians and other denizens of the Ivory Tower in favor of "common sense" or some other rubbish. Iraq? Case in point. Intelligent Design? Well, how could somebody who is knowledgeable about the world's organisms be objective about creationism? Global Warming? Climatologists are all biased.
Hey, does anybody remember V, when the aliens took steps to discredit scientists, who then would not be believed when they presented evidence of the aliens' true form and plans? I'm just sayin'.
Knowledge creates an inherent bias against actions or opinions that knowledge demonstrates to be wrong. I personally am biased against divine intervention, spontaneous generation, Lamarckian evolution, phrenology, and, of course, having faith in those in power. No wonder Bush doesn't like academicians.
Yes, all you academicians who voted to reelect Bush are fools. Go ahead, comment on this post; you know you want to.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly what's wrong with Bush, his administration, the Republican Party, and the persons who vote for its candidates: a profound, almost pathological anti-intellectualism.
I mean, if experts are warning you against a given action in a field in which they are expert, shouldn't you listen to them? You can read my thoughts on the probability of success in our current efforts in Iraq here. With all due respect to Mr. Bremer, with my MA in History, I know a hell of a lot more about the history of foreign interventions in West Asia than he or, it would seem, just about anybody making actual decisions about our policy in Iraq. And I'm hardly an expert.
Pick any complex issue, and you'll find that the Republicans (of whom I have a frighteningly representative microcosm in my parents) are likely rejecting the word of academicians and other denizens of the Ivory Tower in favor of "common sense" or some other rubbish. Iraq? Case in point. Intelligent Design? Well, how could somebody who is knowledgeable about the world's organisms be objective about creationism? Global Warming? Climatologists are all biased.
Hey, does anybody remember V, when the aliens took steps to discredit scientists, who then would not be believed when they presented evidence of the aliens' true form and plans? I'm just sayin'.
Knowledge creates an inherent bias against actions or opinions that knowledge demonstrates to be wrong. I personally am biased against divine intervention, spontaneous generation, Lamarckian evolution, phrenology, and, of course, having faith in those in power. No wonder Bush doesn't like academicians.
Yes, all you academicians who voted to reelect Bush are fools. Go ahead, comment on this post; you know you want to.
posted by heavynettle at 20:21
3 Comments:
The most ironic part of Bremer's comment is that he fails to see the irony in it. I still don't understand where we got this guy. What was with the boots, anyway?
On the anti-intellectualism thing, I've heard neo-cons & their ilk talk about strategies they can use to create experts in middle eastern policy who aren't "anti-American," as they define "anti-American," i.e. anyone without a slavishly hawkish loyalty to the goals of extreme right-wing Israeli politicians. (When did Israel become a state, again? I must have missed that.)
See, it turns out that bright-eyed young Americans who go to college and actually study the middle east end up questioning America's policy and policy objectives, and don't usually feel comfortable joining the state department, the oil industry, the Israeli lobby, or other mouth-pieces of that policy. I might add, and look how well that policy has served us. So, basically, what the neo-cons are saying is that educated people don't support their policies, so they need to change academia to re-educate students to understand the rightness (no pun intended) of the current position.
This coming from the protectors of a culture where for most of the 20th century even being able to speak Arabic was usually the deathknell for any career in intelligence or the foreign service, since it was assumed your knowledge of the language made you predisposed against not just American policy but also against America.
So, since no career diplomat or CIA types would learn Arabic, guess where we got all our intelligence on the middle east? From the same people who helped sell us the Iraq war: Israel and disaffected expatriots from Iraq, Iran, etc. Now, I'm not saying these people are bad or duplicitous, but they clearly have an agenda that puts their interests ahead of U.S. interests. And yet, they are the primary information gatherers for U.S. middle east policy since American experts, who generally take issue with a lot of the damn ass things we do over there, are not trusted.
Well said. I might add to the example of Middle East policy the effect of the Mao's victory in China: academicians expert in Chinese language, history, and even food were held suspect by the (Truman) administration, and many lost their jobs.
Also in kind with all this are the constant complaints of liberal bias on college campuses. There may be a form of virulent "you can't say that"-ism, but, well, the more learned one gets, the more readily (usually) one can see through the facile arguments of the Right. Aargh.
I forgot the punchline: one of the results of the purge of suspected Mao-philes among the U.S. experts in Chinese was the complete surprise in U.S. intelligence when China detonated it's first nuclear weapon in 1964. Chickens home to roost, ladies and gentlemen.
That phrase brings to mind Operation Ajax, in which the U.S. overthrew the democratically elected parliamentary government of Iran and installed Mohammed Reza Shah, or, to us, simply "The Shah". Twenty-five years later, a revolution in the name of Ayatollah Rudhollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah and gave us that dandy hostage crisis. Of course, to be fair, it led the Brezhnev to sink the Soviets into the quagmire of Afghanistan, which outlasted two of his successors and ultimately led to, first, glasnost' and perestroika, and ultimately to the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself. So sometimes blind ignorance marries blind luck.
That, by the way, is not an endorsement of policies based on ignorance. . . .
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