Comment by spankyspangler | Hacker News Reader

Comment by spankyspangler | Hacker News Reader

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This goes to all politicians and "experts" and journalists.

The slavish subservience to authority and desperate clamor to lick boot sickens me. I mean, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, the gun running and drug smuggling and interventions in South and Central America, banking corruption and laundering, the subprime crash, the Panama Papers, Congressional insider trading, corporations paying no taxes while politicians clutch pearls and wring hands about how they're using legal loopholes so there's nothing they can do about it, intelligence agencies spying on congress and on citizens, fabrications of stories about collusion with Putin, the list is endless.

And yet again, like clockwork, once again the "experts" and "journalists" know what is best for us and once again the followers are all falling over themselves to prove their devotion by putting on their big shows of faith, and denouncing and bullying all the heretics and traitors who dare to ask questions.

I have to laugh if it wasn't so sad. For some stupid reason I had some hope, but after seeing it all play out again it seems like old Dick Cheney could come and start talking about Iran and WMDs or denounce the next Gaddafi, and Fox and the NYT and all those other "trusted experts" would duly start regurgitating their lines, and pretty soon everyone would fall in line and anyone who didn't want to go to war (read: send others to war) would be un-American traitors.

> The slavish subservience to authority and desperate clamor to lick boot sickens me.

Have you considered that the "desperate clamor" might just be a clamor to do the best thing ? And just how would we do that?

Your entire attitude seems to be predicated on the idea that nobody actually knows anything, there's no point listening to "experts" (even putting the quotes around the word is intended to be dismissive), and there's no way to spend time learning more about something.

I thoroughly reject that POV.

Look, you've provided a great list of terrible things that the US (and other) governments have done (though it's necessarily incomplete and mostly rather recent). But in the context of your point, so what?

What about the experts that know how to build bridges properly? What about the governmental policies that actually result in positive changes? What about the doctors, engineers, designers, architects, farmers who actually do have a better understanding of their fields than an average person?

I don't disagree with you about the lamentable actions of our government and the processes/structures that allow them to happen. But I reject the implication that this requires me to just be infinitely cynical about everything.

> Have you considered that the "desperate clamor" might just be a clamor to do the best thing ? And just how would we do that?

I have considered that, and rejected it.

I'm not talking about people who don't really know and genuinely get their information from whatever their TV or internet or friends tell them and they just go along with it but generally live and let live in the face of differing opinions.

I'm talking about the hateful bullying mobs going around attacking people, and the people and corporations who actually look into the information which is quite easy to see those "authorities" are hardly a good source of truth, yet they grovel down on their hands and knees to lick boot.

> Your entire attitude seems to be predicated on the idea that nobody actually knows anything, there's no point listening to "experts" (even putting the quotes around the word is intended to be dismissive), and there's no way to spend time learning more about something.

That's not my attitude.

> Look, you've provided a great list of terrible things that the US (and other) governments have done (though it's necessarily incomplete and mostly rather recent). But in the context of your point, so what?

The context of my point is that journalists, politicians, and other self-proclaimed "experts" are not. It is more the rule than the exception that they are self-interested corrupt liars and manipulators.

I'm not talking about, say, the scientist who develops climate models or the medical researcher developing vaccines. I'm not talking about actual experts.

> What about the experts that know how to build bridges properly? What about the governmental policies that actually result in positive changes? What about the doctors, engineers, designers, architects, farmers who actually do have a better understanding of their fields than an average person?

What about them? None of them are manipulating the populace into going to war, or drumming up their throngs of pathetic subservient bootlickers and brownshirts to attack and bully anybody who questions them. So I'm obviously not talking about them.

> I don't disagree with you about the lamentable actions of our government and the processes/structures that allow them to happen. But I reject the implication that this requires me to just be infinitely cynical about everything.

There was no implication.

So how do you distinguish between faux "experts" and actual experts?

Do you believe that people who write (long form articles, books) about a subject have nothing useful to say?

> So how do you distinguish between faux "experts" and actual experts?

It's not always easy, but in the case of COVID there were a lot of obvious shysters who were slavishly worshipped by the mob.

Opening your eyes and thinking for yourself, and not being desperately and pathetically subservient to "authority" or to mob mentality is a good start.

> Do you believe that people who write (long form articles, books) about a subject have nothing useful to say?

I do not.

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