In our time we’ve traded wise men for experts — Confucius for the credentialed, Aquinas for academicians, Democritus for the degreed. Consequently, we don’t make our ancestors’ bush-league mistakes, such as the Romans using lead pipes, drilling holes in people’s heads to treat mental derangement, or selling radium-laced candy and water.
We make different bush-league mistakes. In fact, says Rob Long, pondering all the recent decades’ blunders, “you might start to wonder if anyone knows anything.”
“Here’s what I mean,” explains Long, a television writer and producer opining at the Washington Examiner:
COVID masks, mortgage-backed securities, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, carbs, red wine, voter turnout, lard, phonics, and Pluto. (Among others.) Smart people — and I knew some of the folks who were involved in the home finance catastrophe of 2007, and let me assure you that they were smart — seem to be making a lot of costly and dangerous mistakes. It often seems like we’re living through an Age of Blunder.
Here’s a noncontroversial example from history: say what you like about the brutal Stalinist regime of the (thankfully late) German Democratic Republic, but they were pretty good about spying on their own citizens. … They knew everything there was to know about the German Democratic Republic except that it was about to collapse. Which was the one thing they really needed to know. Talk about the Age of Blunder!
How Expert Are They?
After providing a few more examples, Long discussed the recent blizzard that struck New York and elsewhere. He said that he and some friends were discussing beforehand whether it would materialize. “Experts,” ya know? But they were right on this occasion, he stated.
Short-term weather, however, can be predicted with decent accuracy. But on a related note, there’s the following.
A generation ago, in 2000, climate scientist Dr. David Viner stated that within just a handful of years, snowfall will be “a very rare and exciting event. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”
Now, Viner was talking about Great Britain — which was hit by a “devastating snowstorm” just last year. But then there’s the reality here in the Colonies. Only a week ago, parts of my southern N.Y. county got buried under 17 inches of global warming.
Oh, and if you think nothing could be finer than poking fun at Viner, know that he’s hardly alone. The late Professor Walter E. Williams illustrated this beautifully in his 2017 piece “Environmentalists’ Wild Predictions.”
Hellbound and Down 