The Truth About the Experts and the Public

One of the eternal laments of the centrist ideologue and their media element is that the public did not defer completely to established expertise, while painting those among the public who fail to do so as a pack of anti-intellectual Know-Nothings. The idea that there could be expertise outside the Establishment; that the Establishment's expertise may be significantly flawed; that those non-Establishment experts, and even others, may have a sound, strong, critique of the Establishment; is something they do not, cannot, concede. In particular they can never admit that the professionalization of knowledge has its dangers, especially where the professionals are especially close to and especially watched by the powerful, such that rather than devoting themselves to fact, truth and public service they just tell the powerful what they want said--because the centrist is famously evasive on the question of power, and anyway conservative enough that they are as respectful toward those on top as they are disrespectful toward those on the bottom, such that even if they did acknowledge such a thing they would not see it as a problem. Still less does the centrist consider the significances of their own lapses in respect for the experts--as in how they disregarded the consensus among climate scientists about anthropogenic climate change as not only real but a problem warranting urgent redress to accommodate the denialists. No, they are sure, the disrespect that bothers them must be a matter of the grubby Know-Nothings being too arrogant and cynical (never mind where that comes from, the centrist is not big on reasoning things out to their causes) to show their upstanding betters the proper respect.