Entry 2448, on 2026-07-07 at 14:19:01 (Rating 4, Politics)
I have already written a recent blog post defending the idea of populism. Why did I need to do that? Because the "elites", including most of the media, have the attitude that populism is a lesser form of politics, and that policies which resonate with the "peasants" can never be good, and we should be guided by experts, academics, bureaucrats, and experienced conventional politicians.
I'm not saying that we should ignore experts, obviously, but there are several great weaknesses many experts have...
First, that their tight focus on their area of expertise often blinds them from considering a subject from other perspectives, because they only see things in relation to that area they know about, and either don't think other approaches are valuable, or maybe don't even know about them at all.
A common way to describe these people is that they now more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing! I worked in a university of almost 40 years and I saw that all the time from academics, although there certainly were exceptions.
Second, experts are sometimes quite arrogant. As I have said in the past, arrogance isn't necessarily bad when it is justified, but the specific problem I see is that people think that because they are so skilled at that one tiny thing, they are equally brilliant at everything.
I also saw this a lot in the university, although again, there certainly were plenty of exceptions, and many of the academics showed surprising humility.
Third, experts often concentrate on something which, in my opinion, has either no value or even has negative value when looked at from the greater perspective. I hesitate to list some of these areas but hey, let's do it anyway!
They include women's studies, indigenous studies, and theology. Note that there isn't necessarily anything wrong with these subjects n theory, but the underlying ideology these subjects suffer from is often entirely anti-intellectual, politically motivated, and grossly biased.
Often researching (or allegedly researching) these subjects actually reduces the amount of useful knowledge we have, because the results are so contrary to reality that they make our understanding of the subject worse.
Needless to say, I saw plenty of this at the university, although there are many subjects being researched and taught there which are still valuable.
Finally, experts often work in environments where their biases are reinforced, because there is often a monoculture in relation to philosophy and politics.
Universities are probably the best (or worst) example of this. It is well known that university staff tend to be hugely dedicated to leftist politics, and as you will be very aware by now if you follow this blog, universities are saturated in postmodernist nonsense.
While I like to criticise universities, they are not the only place this happens. Many large government bureaucracies are potentially even worse, and other organisations are similarly affected. And yes, some think tanks are dominated by right-wing dogma in the same was as other organisations are dominated by the left, but they are very much in the minority.
I had a bit of fun by criticising experts during the COVID era. In articular I enjoyed lampooning Mike Baker (who I like to call "Bad News Baker"), Ashley Bloomfield (AKA "Ghastly Doomfield), and Siouxsie Wiles ("Woozy Smiles").
Note that these "experts" really did know quite a bit about pandemics (well, good ol' Bad News did, anyway, but I would be more hesitant about the other two) but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be skeptical about their public utterances which were clearly affected by politics and their dedication to the tyrant, Jacinda Ardern.
As you might be able to tell from the names I gave them, I think they pushed the hazards of COVID far too much, primarily for political purposes, rather than engaging in genuine science. They were affected by all of the phenomena I listed above. I'm not saying we should have ignored them, but I am saying the "Podium of Truth" undoubtedly should have been challenged a lot more. But the media completely failed on that.
This blog post was originally going to examine the ideas of New Zealand's most well known populist politician, Shane Jones, but it has turned into a more general examination of the conflict between experts and the majority of ordinary citizens. I hope to talk about my thoughts on Jones (both good and bad) in a future post.
Comment 1 (9539) by OJB on 2026-07-07 at 14:25:50:
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