The problems that arise when everyone’s an ‘expert’
The Chinese spy balloon is history. Our long national nightmare is over, thanks to a U.S. F-22 Raptor fighter jet that shot the balloon out of the sky.
“They successfully took it down, and I want to compliment our aviators who did it,” said President Joe Biden after a week of pundits and politicians pontificating about the proper course of action against the intrusive balloon. One could actually feel the country’s collective sigh of relief once it was gone. Late, the U.S. government and Canada shot down one over Alaska, another over the Yukon Territory and a third over Michigan.
In all seriousness, if China gathered any actual intel from “Balloongate,” it is this: American discourse on political issues has deteriorated into the equivalent of a shoving match between schoolboys.
“Literally every regular person I know is talking about how to shoot down the Chinese Spy Balloon,” tweeted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (aka “MTG”) before the fighter jet did the deed. “It would be great if an average Joe shot it down because China Joe won’t. Regular Americans can do everything better than the government and actually care about our country.”
Closer to home, Patrick Sasser, erstwhile campaign manager for Bob Stefanowski, also used Twitter to share his thoughts: “I have officially lost all confidence in our President. This Balloon should have never been allowed to enter into our airspace. How did this even happen? Someone needs to answer for this starting with [the president].”
This was typical of the “conversations”
I witnessed on social media: A perpetual litany of critics — including everyday citizens — taking Biden and the Pentagon to task for allegedly botching their response to the spy balloon. It was, I realized, a perfect example of what author Tom Nichols called “The Death of Expertise” in his 2017 book.
“Laypeople complain about the rule of experts and they demand greater involvement in complicated national questions,” writes Nichols, “but many of them only express their anger and make these demands after abdicating their own important role in the process: namely, to stay informed and politically literate enough to choose representatives who can act on their behalf.”
In other words, we live in a time when social media has turned Americans into self-appointed experts. Why shouldn’t MTG’S “average Joe” feel emboldened in a Twitter world where he can communicate directly with “China Joe” in the White House?
Maybe because this scenario creates a major problem.
“Democracy cannot function when every citizen is an expert,” adds Nichols. “Yes, it is unbridled ego for experts to believe they can run a democracy while ignoring its voters; it is also, however, ignorant narcissism for laypeople to believe they can maintain a large and advanced nation without listening to the voices of those more educated and experienced than themselves.”
As it happens, the average Americans who railed against Biden actually were uninformed. For example:
The Pentagon had been tracking the balloon for days before the general public even knew of its existence, according to Air Force Gen. Glen Vanherck, commander of U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).
By the time it crossed into U.S. territory on Jan. 28, the general said the balloon had been “assessed as a surveillance device and did not pose a military threat.” Therefore, the military “could not take immediate action because it was not demonstrating [a] hostile act or hostile intent.”
The balloon offered a “potential opportunity for us to collect intel where we had gaps on prior balloons,” added Vanherck, which could improve NORAD’S ability to detect future spy attempts.
Finally, this was not the first time a Chinese spy balloon had entered U.S. airspace; it happened, unbeknownst to the U.S. public, three times during the Trump administration and once before under Biden.
Obviously, one would hope that every American who criticized the president knew all this before blaring their critiques. But they didn’t — and that’s the point.
It truly doesn’t matter if one is liberal or conservative, a Democrat or a Republican. All of us are at risk when everyone’s an expert because, in that case, no one is an expert. Or at least the real experts and the facts they provide get lost in all the clamor. And in the end, as Tom Nichols says, “A society that is post-factual is pre-fascist.”