Thank you for this piece. It really distills what Trumpism is ultimately about, putting aside all the policy nuances.
I grew up in Pakistan, where the military has ruled (directly or indirectly) for decades, assisted by a corrupt political elite and bureaucracy. The hallmark of this system was incompetence, since all promotions were determined by political connections and loyalty.
One particularly ludicrous example was the acting chairman of the Pakistan cricket team, who was also a serving general in charge of launching a counteroffensive towards Delhi if the Indian army crossed the border!
I am extremely concerned about the deficit and don't see any political will to address it. I also cherish the meritocracy that allowed me to immigrate here, and strongly believe in asylum reform and securing the border. Energy independence (and hence continued fracking for oil/gas) are critical given the current geopolitical realities, and in that same vein some element of protectionism is necessary for the US to maintain viable critical industries.
I am not confident that a political party that is now essentially a cult can deliver this.
For all it's flaws, the Democratic party is not a monolith. Hopefully the next decade will bring two functional political parties back into the equation.
It might take a financial event for the debt to really matter in politics. I am hopeful that is not the case, but it seems like it might requite an emergency before something is done to rethink how that is managed. I agree with you, I wish it would be approached more pro-actively but it is hard to see either political party swallowing a pain pill and enacting policies that are guaranteed to lose them the next round of elections.
Agreed. The political incentives to keep on printing money and kick the can down the road are too great.
It’s ironic - I would assume 100% of Noah’s readers (and probably a solid majority of all Americans) agree that some balance of tax increases and spending cuts are the place to start. The political center needs to be resurrected for this to become reality.
Ya, I would like to see a blended approach. I think the problem is a lot of people say they want that, but when you say "well we are cutting x" they go noooooooo!
Polarization degrades the competence of both sides, not just the right. The right is more immediately affected because of the migration of the educated meritocrat types to the other coalition, but putting all those people in the same party creates a dysfunctional hothouse atmosphere.
It's Cass Sunstein's "law of group polarization": Without anyone else there to push back, the educated extremists -- think downwardly mobile humanities grads and elite overproduction -- get very loud and succeed in stifling dissent. This is how we got "racism is the real pandemic" and all the rest of it.
Given the choice, I know which of the two sides is more functional and which I want in charge. But what I really want is to have two normal parties again.
Or maybe the influx of smart people with center-right views who are driven away by Trumpism will help moderate the Democrats. Hard to say. In any case, I think the fight against polarization mostly doesn't happen in the voting booth (instead, find good institutions to support, and push bad institutions to become better), and to the extent it does, the obvious thing to do is to vote for the less radical party to disincentivize further polarization.
What exactly is supposed to be the problem with weaving indigenous knowledge into scientific knowledge? It’s obviously true that indigenous knowledge hasn’t gone through the sort of checking process that western science goes through, but it’s also clear that locals (and especially those who have gone through generations of transmission) have some knowledge that hasn’t had a chance to go through peer review yet. Alchemy was a real source of knowledge that gradually transformed into chemistry, and people who think we should reject that kind of traditional knowledge rather than try to mine it are just throwing away information.
I think it's a) annoyance at the sort of people who are arguing for it, but more importantly b) distrust of those people. If indigenous knowledge is a rich source of data and hypotheses, that's great; if it's a code word for politically motivated weakening of evidentiary standards, not so great. And if you have very little trust in the people arguing for it, you'll naturally suspect it's the latter.
Thank you--I came here to ask Noah to pick on some other "woke" idea.
I guess, if you haven't read up a bit (I expect better of you Noah!), you might think this refers to "rain dances" or something, not allowing periodic controlled burns (a common indigenous practice, US park officials avoided all burns for decades in some areas and that's contributing to fire issues now) or cycling hunting grounds/seasons (not doing that now is contributing of overfishing among other things)
Also the classic case of an anthropologist thinking “hmmm, I wonder why their folk medicine involves making this complicated preparation from that strange plant?”
Probably not as much as we'd hope. I've read that people have set up companies to "mine" indigenous knowledge for promising drug candidates, but they haven't been successful at finding enough drugs that are good enough to make a profit.
The comparison of alchemy is so strange. You can say "alchemy eventually became chemistry", but - now we have chemistry! Embracing "indigenous knowledge" would be like rejecting chemistry and going back to alchemy.
I think what Kenny means is that we should take an evidence-based approach and test indigenous knowledge to see if there are practices, etc that are effective. I don't think he means that we should embrace it all without skepticism/believe it all works as-advertised without testing.
Leaf is exactly right. Embracing indigenous knowledge is not like rejecting chemistry and going back to alchemy. It’s like embracing chemistry, while also noticing that a bunch of old alchemy texts no one has looked at in 300 years mention a weird mineral from a particular island no one has been looking at for a while and realizing that this mineral actually has some unusual properties, and turns out to be an interesting compound of some sort.
I guess I can agree with that, but I think at this point you're straying into sanewashing territory. It's not what the "indigenous knowledge" people actually believe, they are fully signed up to the notion that scientific rigour is western imperialism or something.
I suspect the average workaday scientist with a positive opinion of indigenous knowledge believes something like what Kenny is saying. They're not very loud about it, though.
The more activist types are more ideological, self-consciously decolonial, honestly unscientific though, yeah. I wish these people would pipe down because they're giving a lot of good ideas a bad name.
We also recently built a superpowered "sort by controversial" machine to elevate the craziest and most provocative people in everything and called it social media. That may not have been such a good idea.
There surely are some people like that, and I don’t want to endorse what they are saying. But you don’t have to endorse that to accept that there is indigenous knowledge and that it is worth studying and bringing in to modern science. I assume that the editors of Nature aren’t saying that scientific rigor is western imperialism.
A better example might be homeopathy, which is still a widely accepted part of western medicine, even though its evidence base (once adjusted for measurement error) is zero and it conflicts with basic scientific principles. Plenty of examples in psychotherapy too.
But these are not woke, so nobody cares. Rather than trying to fix (or even just direct attention to) real problems, right-wing media creates moral panics about fake problems, because that's what helps them obtain power and money.
(This is the same political coalition, mind you, who made the teaching of creationism their main goal twenty years ago. Hypocrisy levels just off the chart.)
Indigenous knowledge isn’t knowledge. At most, it’s a tool for generating a hypothesis or two that can actually be tested scientifically. It becomes knowledge after being tested.
Indigenous people do test things, just as athletes and musicians and filmmakers and dancers and so on test the things they do, even though they’re not scientists and don’t do controlled statistical studies. All these groups have knowledge of the specific things they work with, and if scientists want to know stuff about it, they should probably work with the people who have knowledge already, even if it’s not yet systematic in the way we want to get it.
The way I see it, if this knowledge is valuable, it’s a low hanging fruit for scientists/researchers to steal or adopt it. I suspect that most of it is horseshit and that’s why it’s not part of mainstream.
I think it can depend on if the indigenous knowledge directly contradicts the scientific knowledge. For example, the scientific view is that the first indigenous populations in North America arrived here some 30,000 years ago (yeah, the experts argue about it, but 30K years ago is a common estimate). Then 16K years ago another migration group arrived. But some of the indigenous groups themselves assert that they have always been here. It can make a difference if you're arguing about the morality of settlements, land ownership, conquests, etc.
Because progressives view the value and acceptance of indigenous knowledge as preceding its rigorous evaluation. It’s “too good to check”. It’s the difference between the principle of researching plants for medicinal properties and just touting them as “natural cures’ based upon ancient wisdom
That’s exactly my point. Those who promote indigenous knowledge claim that the wisdom is coming from nature. They are the ones putting words in Nature’s mouth
Oh I see, you are misinterpreting me as talking about the mystical spirit force “nature” when I am referring to the British science journal Nature. This is all about an editorial in Nature, which said indigenous knowledge should be woven into modern science.
Only some people who promote indigenous knowledge believe in this mystical woo spirit. Many others just believe in the fact that traditions that have interacted with a local ecosystem for thousands of years have sometimes picked up some important facts about it, even if they haven’t don’t formal statistical testing or anything to understand *how* they picked up those facts.
Yes, I misinterpreted that. But a Nature editorial to that effect pretends that this would be something new. Ancient knowledge has always had the status of rumor, a source of hypotheses. But the current promotion treats it as privileged. Look at astronomy. Tradition contains all sorts of information about the movement of celestial bodies much of it accurate but also a lot of nonsense. It’s like looking at a piece of unrefined iron ore and calling it indigenous steel
I generally agree with much or your analysis. But your disrespect of indigenous knowledge as useful to enhancing western science is wrong. I live in Alaska and was Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game for eight years. We relied on both western science and indigenous knowledge in making resource management decisions. Our work with local people gave our biologists important insights and conversely gave local people greater trust and acceptance of western science. Frank Rue
Isn't indigenous knowledge just knowledge that hasn't been fully tested with a scientific system? Science isn't western, it is a merely a process to determine truth through repeated experimentation with good data collection and processes.
What makes you think that the left cranks aren't going to destroy competence any more than the right cranks? All that lefty nonsense you described sure sounds like the death of competence to me (and don't get me started on dumbing down schools in the name of equality). Why should I be more afraid of right wing cranks? If the left wing cranks can also run the day to day, why can't they as well?
You're ok with the Federalist Society, because they apparently are competent cranks, but on the other side. Are you sure this isn't just status quo bias, that the cranks in charge now can be tolerated, but if the other side's cranks get in, we're in for it? Or maybe classism? The educated upper class cranks of the Federalist Society and lefty academics and "scientists" are tolerable, but not those dirty working class cranks?
The moderates on the left were fired a long time ago. When scientific journals are calling for the recognition of primitive witchcraft as modern science, the moderates have already been fired. When school boards are removing advanced classes from the curriculum in accordance with leftist religious dogma, the moderates have already been fired. When sports leagues are allowing transgender men to compete in the womens division, the moderates have already been fired. Of course Biden's administration isn't rebelling against him. They aren't the moderates like Noah who oppose this stuff.
I don't want an anti-vaxer in there either, but it's just another flavor of the same thing, not a fundamental change.
Seems like you are focusing on weird fringe stories that get amplified by the news looking for eyeballs and not the day to day reality of how things are being governed.
What are your news sources for checking in on this type of stuff?
These things were all over the news. They were in Noah's article. You know they happened and I'm not going to waste my time when you could easily type it into Google.
Why won't you Democrats ever actually argue your point? Do you support these things? If so, argue for them. If not, say it, and don't lie to me that it didn't happen. You are such dishonest evasive people always lying about what you do. At least when Republicans want to so things I don't like they aren't sneaky liars about it. They don't play word games. They just come right out and say "abortion is wrong and we're going to ban it." I can respect that.
SF did some silly stuff with math I remember... hadn't heard of anyone else doing something stupid with math. Last I heard the people who did silly stuff all lost their re-election in SF and now that is no longer a problem. Did you follow that and see how it went down? I could be wrong but last time I checked that was the case I thought...
Just weird fringe stuff that the media uses to capture eyeballs and make a mountain out of a molehill.
Everywhere I go Democrats lower standards and destroy education for our best and brightest students. It's not a molehill. The school boards of our largest cities are not "fringe" stuff.
Lowering school standards in the name of equity is a real problem (though already receding, and in general I think it's structurally hard for the education system to end up doing something that well-off parents hate) but the other two are just silly. Talking about including indigenous science is an affectation with zero actual impact, like land acknowledgements. (Also a bit ironic, because you know who actually tried to include indigenous science? Creationists.) Putting transwomen and biological women in the same sport category is probably unfair to the latter, but then athletes are already a highly privileged class of people, and elite sports in general aren't particularly beneficial to society, so who cares? Comparing that with e.g. people trying to undermine the vaccination regime is just silly.
Rich parents benefit from dumbing down of public schools. They can send their kids to private schools and if public school is terrible, they no longer have to worry about competition from smart middle class and poor people.
The trans sports thing isn't really a huge issue on its own it's just that anybody who is dumb enough to think that's a good idea is so insane that I would never want them in charge of anything.
There is no quibble from me. Trump is an awful human. However, you wrote a column I would expect from a partisan.
I did not vote for Trump for all the reasons above. Throughout this campaign season, I have spent much of my commenting, mainly at The Dispatch, explaining why people vote for Trump.
While you might be loath to list all the illiberal things Democrats have done, you can be sure they are there. I heard Jamie Raskin complaining about gerrymandering, and I almost spit my coffee out. It was as if Democrat Legislatures never gerrymandered districts in their favor.
This question has never been addressed, but it is the most illiberal thing I can think of since it is the dirtiest or political dirty trick of my lifetime. The Steele Dossier and the pain inflicted on the country.
Democrats believe Trump's supporters are garbage. Joe Biden just said the quiet part out loud. MAGA is an awful movement run by terrible people who are sycophants of one of the most despicable politicians in my lifetime. I grant you that.
Yet what did the Democrat Party do? It spent money elevating the worst of the MAGA candidates in complete abrogation of their civic responsibility. The Democrat creed is to win at any cost. Hillary’s planting of the dossier into a duped FBI caused several years of trauma and angst for no other reason other than to corruptly win. When Harry Reid was interviewed about Romney’s taxes, he admitted he lied about Romney paying taxes; his excuse was, “It worked, didn’t it.”
Spare the moralizing. Many Democrats have refused to certify the presidential election through the years. The win-at-any-cost mentality doesn’t leave me with any sense that the Democrat Party holds the high ground in ethical behavior. This latest BS about how undemocratic the Electoral College is is solely due to their advantage in Illinois, CA, and NY. If you want to make stealing an election harder, the EC is the best way to do it. A national vote? Much easier. Want to keep money out of politics? A national election would cause money to be spent.
The caterwauling over DC and Puerto Rico not being states has only one reason for Democrats to push it. More Democrat Senators. The current GOP is a hopeless pile of steaming shit. I am politically homeless. But please, unless you just want to be ridiculed as another partisan hack, let us not pretend that Democrats are angels and bare no responsibility for our current crappy politics.
Here is a rule I like to live by. If someone has a golden toilet, investigate if it is due to them being a egomaniac or if they are a very funny dude. Trump is an egomaniac and generally bad human being. Why would I want him as president when he lacks any smidgen of honor or respect for other people?
hah agreed. I just read a book on Mussolini as he seems like a buffon, but I can't tell if in the moment they also thought he was funny. Anyone know history well enough to know if he was mocked for his buffoonery?
This Presidential election is clearly the worst binary choice between candidates in my lifetime. You should have at least mentioned that Kamala has alienated nearly all her former staff, who won’t speak out because that is obviously career suicide.
Trump is a narcissistic dirtbag man child motivated by glory and vengeance. Harris is a soulless, unimpressive, insecure husk of ambition.
Either will hand power to deranged ideologues who are immune to evidence and desire to punish their out-groups. Unfortunately, both parties have created incentive structures that elevate the spineless conformists and sideline or vilify anyone with independence or principles.
One candidate attempted a self-coup the other hasn't and gives no indication that she would ever attempt such a thing. On that basis alone it's the easiest binary choice in my lifetime between presidential candidates.
Learned a new word today. Every word about Trump and Trumpism is true.
I’ve noticed that when liberals criticize the excesses of the progressive movement in institutions, they try to steer clear of the trans issue. Most of the criticism has come from centrists (like Andrew Sullivan and Bill Maher) and the right. I don’t know if it’s to avoid fracturing of the Democratic coalition before an important election or whether they genuinely believe in the more contentious parts of the trans agenda/movement.
I've seen commentators note that both the centrists and the progressives have been very careful this time around to not mention the disagreements on the matters they disagree on. As one joker said, Democrats in shocking array! But also, despite the strong opinions on trans issues, it doesn't seem to come up as something the voters prioritize. So just burying that internal disagreement is the electoral optimum.
Or they think it's an extremely minor issue that affects less than a percent of a percent of the US population and exaggerating its importance will only lead to electing Republicans who will then go on to strip healthcare from 10% of the US population etc. etc.
(That said, most of the critics who actually say anything worth reading are on the moderate left, I think. E.g. Jesse Singal.)
I agree that Jesse Singal is worth reading but he's hardly the only one.
If it is a minor issue then maybe the Biden administration should have stayed out of it. Also, every year is not an election year so there's definitely a lack of moral courage on the even the center left pundits on this issue, people with whom I agree on many issues.
Overall, I think it’s because they are sensitive to protecting their positions of privilege and power. Some are completely spineless conformists. Most are simply credulous and hypersensitive to the social/professional consequences of questioning the orthodoxies of their in-group.
Great post but I have to push back on one point: cartelization by the Federalist Society has definitely eroded competence in the federal judiciary. You see it not just in outright incompetence at the district level (see, e.g., Aileen Cannon), but also otherwise competent appellate judges who are appointed at an early age, for ideological reasons, before they can accumulate any trial experience whatsoever.
I think the etymology of “kakistocracy” is Greek. But “kak” is also the Afrikaans word (both noun and verb) referring to feces or the act of defecation. So for some of us, it is particularly edifying to see “kakistocracy” applied appropriately.
"There are actually ways for conservatives to rebuild their influence in American institutions without destroying those institutions."
Noah, in this vein, I'm curious what you think of Chris Rufo et al's work with the Univ of S. Florida. Is this an example of conservatives "rebuilding influence", or do you think Rufo is destroying instead?
I ask because a great many conservatives view Rufo's system as the only chance we have: gain political power and use that political power to reconquer the educational institutions that have been seized by radicals over the last 60 years.
When hiring boards of major universities are 60:1 or 100:1 against us ideologically (and view their ideology as a theology), we really don't have a fair shot otherwise.
Christopher Rufo is a case study in how, along the work of Bob Altemeyer, there needs to be a totalitarian personality type like RWA.
Brian, Rufo is basically a mirror image of Mao. And you know, Rufo has to telegraph his every move on social media like expository monologue from a movie villain.
It's extremely weird to be against wokeism and then employ the same authoritarian tactics to fight back against it. I can't predict the future but I think if he pushes back against the excesses of the progressive movement, he'll be very successful. If his goal is to further the conservative agenda from 20+ years ago and roll back gay marriage and abortion rights, he's going to get his ass kicked.
“For example, conservatives have come to distrust almost all mainstream media sources.”
Gens X, Y, and Z don’t trust mainstream media, either. And they’re not what I’d call conservative. Trump probably wishes he’d followed through on going after TikTok given the anti-Trump memes flourishing among young, first-time voters (e.g. pushback against anti-women’s health and reproductive freedom. Not a good look for either political party. In fact, I don’t see much of a conservative trend in the long-term given the direction of demographics in the U.S. Since 2020, deaths of Baby Boomers and the number of addition voting-age-qualifying youth represents a shift of 52 million votes. Pretty consequential for the long term. Society has changed more than usual, I think, such that it can’t be “assumed” Gen Z will become more conservative as they age. For example, many may resist having children. So, there might be a lot more “childless cat ladies” for Banana Republicans to anger.
My problem is with the term “trust”. I have moderate confidence that the New York Times provides me with adequate information about what is going on in the world but less confidence that the sum of what they deliver is an attempt at an objective perspective
I agree completely, but I feel education wasn't the cause but merely a side effect. As you say, the cult of personality prizes loyalty above competence. I think what has happened is that we have sorted ourselves out between the "loyal" and the "competent" over the past 50 years or so. Before then, our country was made up of thousands of Bedford Falls types of communities. The loyal and the competent coexisted, whether they liked it or not due to the strong culture. Only the lucky ones got out. Cults of personalities like Mr. Potter ruled, but dreamers like George Bailey were forced to put their ambitions aside due to strong family and community ties. Their existence kept Mr. Potter in check. Had George came of age thirty years later, society would have allowed him to go to college and pursue his ambitions. George probably would have ended up living in a metropolitan suburb with some middle-management job, and his kids would be scattered around the country pursuing their dreams. Also, this version of the American Dream allowed entry to women, minorities, immigrants, etc. All you needed to do was get good grades and go to college. It's not that George was any more competent than anyone else in Bedford Falls, it was that he valued that competence over loyalty. George, his offspring, and all their peers are the "elites" that the people of current-day Bedford Falls (or Pottersville) seem to despise so much. And, this division is what we ended up with.
Noah,
Thank you for this piece. It really distills what Trumpism is ultimately about, putting aside all the policy nuances.
I grew up in Pakistan, where the military has ruled (directly or indirectly) for decades, assisted by a corrupt political elite and bureaucracy. The hallmark of this system was incompetence, since all promotions were determined by political connections and loyalty.
One particularly ludicrous example was the acting chairman of the Pakistan cricket team, who was also a serving general in charge of launching a counteroffensive towards Delhi if the Indian army crossed the border!
I am extremely concerned about the deficit and don't see any political will to address it. I also cherish the meritocracy that allowed me to immigrate here, and strongly believe in asylum reform and securing the border. Energy independence (and hence continued fracking for oil/gas) are critical given the current geopolitical realities, and in that same vein some element of protectionism is necessary for the US to maintain viable critical industries.
I am not confident that a political party that is now essentially a cult can deliver this.
For all it's flaws, the Democratic party is not a monolith. Hopefully the next decade will bring two functional political parties back into the equation.
It might take a financial event for the debt to really matter in politics. I am hopeful that is not the case, but it seems like it might requite an emergency before something is done to rethink how that is managed. I agree with you, I wish it would be approached more pro-actively but it is hard to see either political party swallowing a pain pill and enacting policies that are guaranteed to lose them the next round of elections.
Agreed. The political incentives to keep on printing money and kick the can down the road are too great.
It’s ironic - I would assume 100% of Noah’s readers (and probably a solid majority of all Americans) agree that some balance of tax increases and spending cuts are the place to start. The political center needs to be resurrected for this to become reality.
Ya, I would like to see a blended approach. I think the problem is a lot of people say they want that, but when you say "well we are cutting x" they go noooooooo!
Polarization degrades the competence of both sides, not just the right. The right is more immediately affected because of the migration of the educated meritocrat types to the other coalition, but putting all those people in the same party creates a dysfunctional hothouse atmosphere.
It's Cass Sunstein's "law of group polarization": Without anyone else there to push back, the educated extremists -- think downwardly mobile humanities grads and elite overproduction -- get very loud and succeed in stifling dissent. This is how we got "racism is the real pandemic" and all the rest of it.
Given the choice, I know which of the two sides is more functional and which I want in charge. But what I really want is to have two normal parties again.
Or maybe the influx of smart people with center-right views who are driven away by Trumpism will help moderate the Democrats. Hard to say. In any case, I think the fight against polarization mostly doesn't happen in the voting booth (instead, find good institutions to support, and push bad institutions to become better), and to the extent it does, the obvious thing to do is to vote for the less radical party to disincentivize further polarization.
What exactly is supposed to be the problem with weaving indigenous knowledge into scientific knowledge? It’s obviously true that indigenous knowledge hasn’t gone through the sort of checking process that western science goes through, but it’s also clear that locals (and especially those who have gone through generations of transmission) have some knowledge that hasn’t had a chance to go through peer review yet. Alchemy was a real source of knowledge that gradually transformed into chemistry, and people who think we should reject that kind of traditional knowledge rather than try to mine it are just throwing away information.
I think it's a) annoyance at the sort of people who are arguing for it, but more importantly b) distrust of those people. If indigenous knowledge is a rich source of data and hypotheses, that's great; if it's a code word for politically motivated weakening of evidentiary standards, not so great. And if you have very little trust in the people arguing for it, you'll naturally suspect it's the latter.
Thank you--I came here to ask Noah to pick on some other "woke" idea.
I guess, if you haven't read up a bit (I expect better of you Noah!), you might think this refers to "rain dances" or something, not allowing periodic controlled burns (a common indigenous practice, US park officials avoided all burns for decades in some areas and that's contributing to fire issues now) or cycling hunting grounds/seasons (not doing that now is contributing of overfishing among other things)
Also the classic case of an anthropologist thinking “hmmm, I wonder why their folk medicine involves making this complicated preparation from that strange plant?”
Lots of useful drugs to be found that way
Probably not as much as we'd hope. I've read that people have set up companies to "mine" indigenous knowledge for promising drug candidates, but they haven't been successful at finding enough drugs that are good enough to make a profit.
I'm sorry? This is wild!
The comparison of alchemy is so strange. You can say "alchemy eventually became chemistry", but - now we have chemistry! Embracing "indigenous knowledge" would be like rejecting chemistry and going back to alchemy.
I think what Kenny means is that we should take an evidence-based approach and test indigenous knowledge to see if there are practices, etc that are effective. I don't think he means that we should embrace it all without skepticism/believe it all works as-advertised without testing.
Leaf is exactly right. Embracing indigenous knowledge is not like rejecting chemistry and going back to alchemy. It’s like embracing chemistry, while also noticing that a bunch of old alchemy texts no one has looked at in 300 years mention a weird mineral from a particular island no one has been looking at for a while and realizing that this mineral actually has some unusual properties, and turns out to be an interesting compound of some sort.
I guess I can agree with that, but I think at this point you're straying into sanewashing territory. It's not what the "indigenous knowledge" people actually believe, they are fully signed up to the notion that scientific rigour is western imperialism or something.
I suspect the average workaday scientist with a positive opinion of indigenous knowledge believes something like what Kenny is saying. They're not very loud about it, though.
The more activist types are more ideological, self-consciously decolonial, honestly unscientific though, yeah. I wish these people would pipe down because they're giving a lot of good ideas a bad name.
We also recently built a superpowered "sort by controversial" machine to elevate the craziest and most provocative people in everything and called it social media. That may not have been such a good idea.
There surely are some people like that, and I don’t want to endorse what they are saying. But you don’t have to endorse that to accept that there is indigenous knowledge and that it is worth studying and bringing in to modern science. I assume that the editors of Nature aren’t saying that scientific rigor is western imperialism.
A better example might be homeopathy, which is still a widely accepted part of western medicine, even though its evidence base (once adjusted for measurement error) is zero and it conflicts with basic scientific principles. Plenty of examples in psychotherapy too.
But these are not woke, so nobody cares. Rather than trying to fix (or even just direct attention to) real problems, right-wing media creates moral panics about fake problems, because that's what helps them obtain power and money.
(This is the same political coalition, mind you, who made the teaching of creationism their main goal twenty years ago. Hypocrisy levels just off the chart.)
Indigenous knowledge isn’t knowledge. At most, it’s a tool for generating a hypothesis or two that can actually be tested scientifically. It becomes knowledge after being tested.
Indigenous people do test things, just as athletes and musicians and filmmakers and dancers and so on test the things they do, even though they’re not scientists and don’t do controlled statistical studies. All these groups have knowledge of the specific things they work with, and if scientists want to know stuff about it, they should probably work with the people who have knowledge already, even if it’s not yet systematic in the way we want to get it.
The way I see it, if this knowledge is valuable, it’s a low hanging fruit for scientists/researchers to steal or adopt it. I suspect that most of it is horseshit and that’s why it’s not part of mainstream.
I think it can depend on if the indigenous knowledge directly contradicts the scientific knowledge. For example, the scientific view is that the first indigenous populations in North America arrived here some 30,000 years ago (yeah, the experts argue about it, but 30K years ago is a common estimate). Then 16K years ago another migration group arrived. But some of the indigenous groups themselves assert that they have always been here. It can make a difference if you're arguing about the morality of settlements, land ownership, conquests, etc.
Yes that seems important and right. Don’t accept stuff uncritically. But do treat it as one more sort of input that can be used.
Because progressives view the value and acceptance of indigenous knowledge as preceding its rigorous evaluation. It’s “too good to check”. It’s the difference between the principle of researching plants for medicinal properties and just touting them as “natural cures’ based upon ancient wisdom
Why are you putting words in Nature’s mouth? Do you think Nature is endorsing *not* testing things?
That’s exactly my point. Those who promote indigenous knowledge claim that the wisdom is coming from nature. They are the ones putting words in Nature’s mouth
Oh I see, you are misinterpreting me as talking about the mystical spirit force “nature” when I am referring to the British science journal Nature. This is all about an editorial in Nature, which said indigenous knowledge should be woven into modern science.
Only some people who promote indigenous knowledge believe in this mystical woo spirit. Many others just believe in the fact that traditions that have interacted with a local ecosystem for thousands of years have sometimes picked up some important facts about it, even if they haven’t don’t formal statistical testing or anything to understand *how* they picked up those facts.
Yes, I misinterpreted that. But a Nature editorial to that effect pretends that this would be something new. Ancient knowledge has always had the status of rumor, a source of hypotheses. But the current promotion treats it as privileged. Look at astronomy. Tradition contains all sorts of information about the movement of celestial bodies much of it accurate but also a lot of nonsense. It’s like looking at a piece of unrefined iron ore and calling it indigenous steel
I generally agree with much or your analysis. But your disrespect of indigenous knowledge as useful to enhancing western science is wrong. I live in Alaska and was Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game for eight years. We relied on both western science and indigenous knowledge in making resource management decisions. Our work with local people gave our biologists important insights and conversely gave local people greater trust and acceptance of western science. Frank Rue
Isn't indigenous knowledge just knowledge that hasn't been fully tested with a scientific system? Science isn't western, it is a merely a process to determine truth through repeated experimentation with good data collection and processes.
What makes you think that the left cranks aren't going to destroy competence any more than the right cranks? All that lefty nonsense you described sure sounds like the death of competence to me (and don't get me started on dumbing down schools in the name of equality). Why should I be more afraid of right wing cranks? If the left wing cranks can also run the day to day, why can't they as well?
You're ok with the Federalist Society, because they apparently are competent cranks, but on the other side. Are you sure this isn't just status quo bias, that the cranks in charge now can be tolerated, but if the other side's cranks get in, we're in for it? Or maybe classism? The educated upper class cranks of the Federalist Society and lefty academics and "scientists" are tolerable, but not those dirty working class cranks?
The moderates on the left were fired a long time ago. When scientific journals are calling for the recognition of primitive witchcraft as modern science, the moderates have already been fired. When school boards are removing advanced classes from the curriculum in accordance with leftist religious dogma, the moderates have already been fired. When sports leagues are allowing transgender men to compete in the womens division, the moderates have already been fired. Of course Biden's administration isn't rebelling against him. They aren't the moderates like Noah who oppose this stuff.
I don't want an anti-vaxer in there either, but it's just another flavor of the same thing, not a fundamental change.
Seems like you are focusing on weird fringe stories that get amplified by the news looking for eyeballs and not the day to day reality of how things are being governed.
What are your news sources for checking in on this type of stuff?
These things were all over the news. They were in Noah's article. You know they happened and I'm not going to waste my time when you could easily type it into Google.
Why won't you Democrats ever actually argue your point? Do you support these things? If so, argue for them. If not, say it, and don't lie to me that it didn't happen. You are such dishonest evasive people always lying about what you do. At least when Republicans want to so things I don't like they aren't sneaky liars about it. They don't play word games. They just come right out and say "abortion is wrong and we're going to ban it." I can respect that.
I'm an independent actually :)
SF did some silly stuff with math I remember... hadn't heard of anyone else doing something stupid with math. Last I heard the people who did silly stuff all lost their re-election in SF and now that is no longer a problem. Did you follow that and see how it went down? I could be wrong but last time I checked that was the case I thought...
Just weird fringe stuff that the media uses to capture eyeballs and make a mountain out of a molehill.
In 3 states I have lived in now they have dumbed down schools. There is the CA thing. Then they dumbed down the best HS in the country in VA https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14014883/thomas-jefferson-rankings-slump-DEI.html
Now I live in Seattle. They just dumbed that down too https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/why-seattle-public-schools-is-closing-its-highly-capable-cohort-program/
NYC tried to do it too https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/bill-de-blasio-education-new-york-best-schools-destroyed/
Everywhere I go Democrats lower standards and destroy education for our best and brightest students. It's not a molehill. The school boards of our largest cities are not "fringe" stuff.
Lowering school standards in the name of equity is a real problem (though already receding, and in general I think it's structurally hard for the education system to end up doing something that well-off parents hate) but the other two are just silly. Talking about including indigenous science is an affectation with zero actual impact, like land acknowledgements. (Also a bit ironic, because you know who actually tried to include indigenous science? Creationists.) Putting transwomen and biological women in the same sport category is probably unfair to the latter, but then athletes are already a highly privileged class of people, and elite sports in general aren't particularly beneficial to society, so who cares? Comparing that with e.g. people trying to undermine the vaccination regime is just silly.
Rich parents benefit from dumbing down of public schools. They can send their kids to private schools and if public school is terrible, they no longer have to worry about competition from smart middle class and poor people.
The trans sports thing isn't really a huge issue on its own it's just that anybody who is dumb enough to think that's a good idea is so insane that I would never want them in charge of anything.
I wonder when the pro Trump crowd will show up.
> who is nothing if not hyper-competent
Elon Musk is at least several other things.
There is no quibble from me. Trump is an awful human. However, you wrote a column I would expect from a partisan.
I did not vote for Trump for all the reasons above. Throughout this campaign season, I have spent much of my commenting, mainly at The Dispatch, explaining why people vote for Trump.
While you might be loath to list all the illiberal things Democrats have done, you can be sure they are there. I heard Jamie Raskin complaining about gerrymandering, and I almost spit my coffee out. It was as if Democrat Legislatures never gerrymandered districts in their favor.
This question has never been addressed, but it is the most illiberal thing I can think of since it is the dirtiest or political dirty trick of my lifetime. The Steele Dossier and the pain inflicted on the country.
Democrats believe Trump's supporters are garbage. Joe Biden just said the quiet part out loud. MAGA is an awful movement run by terrible people who are sycophants of one of the most despicable politicians in my lifetime. I grant you that.
Yet what did the Democrat Party do? It spent money elevating the worst of the MAGA candidates in complete abrogation of their civic responsibility. The Democrat creed is to win at any cost. Hillary’s planting of the dossier into a duped FBI caused several years of trauma and angst for no other reason other than to corruptly win. When Harry Reid was interviewed about Romney’s taxes, he admitted he lied about Romney paying taxes; his excuse was, “It worked, didn’t it.”
Spare the moralizing. Many Democrats have refused to certify the presidential election through the years. The win-at-any-cost mentality doesn’t leave me with any sense that the Democrat Party holds the high ground in ethical behavior. This latest BS about how undemocratic the Electoral College is is solely due to their advantage in Illinois, CA, and NY. If you want to make stealing an election harder, the EC is the best way to do it. A national vote? Much easier. Want to keep money out of politics? A national election would cause money to be spent.
The caterwauling over DC and Puerto Rico not being states has only one reason for Democrats to push it. More Democrat Senators. The current GOP is a hopeless pile of steaming shit. I am politically homeless. But please, unless you just want to be ridiculed as another partisan hack, let us not pretend that Democrats are angels and bare no responsibility for our current crappy politics.
Here is a rule I like to live by. If someone has a golden toilet, investigate if it is due to them being a egomaniac or if they are a very funny dude. Trump is an egomaniac and generally bad human being. Why would I want him as president when he lacks any smidgen of honor or respect for other people?
He’s unfortunately also very funny. So many quotable sayings and memes and whatnot. I think it’s an important part of the appeal.
(Agreed that he sucks though,🤞 for Tuesday)
hah agreed. I just read a book on Mussolini as he seems like a buffon, but I can't tell if in the moment they also thought he was funny. Anyone know history well enough to know if he was mocked for his buffoonery?
This Presidential election is clearly the worst binary choice between candidates in my lifetime. You should have at least mentioned that Kamala has alienated nearly all her former staff, who won’t speak out because that is obviously career suicide.
Trump is a narcissistic dirtbag man child motivated by glory and vengeance. Harris is a soulless, unimpressive, insecure husk of ambition.
Either will hand power to deranged ideologues who are immune to evidence and desire to punish their out-groups. Unfortunately, both parties have created incentive structures that elevate the spineless conformists and sideline or vilify anyone with independence or principles.
One candidate attempted a self-coup the other hasn't and gives no indication that she would ever attempt such a thing. On that basis alone it's the easiest binary choice in my lifetime between presidential candidates.
"Kamala has alienated her former staff but you don't know because they keep it secret" is a funny allegation, given that Trump actually alienated his former staff, and they do speak out (even though it might well be career suicide). E.g. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/25/election-trump-staffers-john-kelly
Learned a new word today. Every word about Trump and Trumpism is true.
I’ve noticed that when liberals criticize the excesses of the progressive movement in institutions, they try to steer clear of the trans issue. Most of the criticism has come from centrists (like Andrew Sullivan and Bill Maher) and the right. I don’t know if it’s to avoid fracturing of the Democratic coalition before an important election or whether they genuinely believe in the more contentious parts of the trans agenda/movement.
I've seen commentators note that both the centrists and the progressives have been very careful this time around to not mention the disagreements on the matters they disagree on. As one joker said, Democrats in shocking array! But also, despite the strong opinions on trans issues, it doesn't seem to come up as something the voters prioritize. So just burying that internal disagreement is the electoral optimum.
Yes, you're right. Democrats have shown better messaging discipline this election cycle.
Or they think it's an extremely minor issue that affects less than a percent of a percent of the US population and exaggerating its importance will only lead to electing Republicans who will then go on to strip healthcare from 10% of the US population etc. etc.
(That said, most of the critics who actually say anything worth reading are on the moderate left, I think. E.g. Jesse Singal.)
I agree that Jesse Singal is worth reading but he's hardly the only one.
If it is a minor issue then maybe the Biden administration should have stayed out of it. Also, every year is not an election year so there's definitely a lack of moral courage on the even the center left pundits on this issue, people with whom I agree on many issues.
Overall, I think it’s because they are sensitive to protecting their positions of privilege and power. Some are completely spineless conformists. Most are simply credulous and hypersensitive to the social/professional consequences of questioning the orthodoxies of their in-group.
Great post but I have to push back on one point: cartelization by the Federalist Society has definitely eroded competence in the federal judiciary. You see it not just in outright incompetence at the district level (see, e.g., Aileen Cannon), but also otherwise competent appellate judges who are appointed at an early age, for ideological reasons, before they can accumulate any trial experience whatsoever.
I think the etymology of “kakistocracy” is Greek. But “kak” is also the Afrikaans word (both noun and verb) referring to feces or the act of defecation. So for some of us, it is particularly edifying to see “kakistocracy” applied appropriately.
Probably the same word: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/kakka-
"There are actually ways for conservatives to rebuild their influence in American institutions without destroying those institutions."
Noah, in this vein, I'm curious what you think of Chris Rufo et al's work with the Univ of S. Florida. Is this an example of conservatives "rebuilding influence", or do you think Rufo is destroying instead?
I ask because a great many conservatives view Rufo's system as the only chance we have: gain political power and use that political power to reconquer the educational institutions that have been seized by radicals over the last 60 years.
When hiring boards of major universities are 60:1 or 100:1 against us ideologically (and view their ideology as a theology), we really don't have a fair shot otherwise.
Christopher Rufo is a case study in how, along the work of Bob Altemeyer, there needs to be a totalitarian personality type like RWA.
Brian, Rufo is basically a mirror image of Mao. And you know, Rufo has to telegraph his every move on social media like expository monologue from a movie villain.
It's extremely weird to be against wokeism and then employ the same authoritarian tactics to fight back against it. I can't predict the future but I think if he pushes back against the excesses of the progressive movement, he'll be very successful. If his goal is to further the conservative agenda from 20+ years ago and roll back gay marriage and abortion rights, he's going to get his ass kicked.
“For example, conservatives have come to distrust almost all mainstream media sources.”
Gens X, Y, and Z don’t trust mainstream media, either. And they’re not what I’d call conservative. Trump probably wishes he’d followed through on going after TikTok given the anti-Trump memes flourishing among young, first-time voters (e.g. pushback against anti-women’s health and reproductive freedom. Not a good look for either political party. In fact, I don’t see much of a conservative trend in the long-term given the direction of demographics in the U.S. Since 2020, deaths of Baby Boomers and the number of addition voting-age-qualifying youth represents a shift of 52 million votes. Pretty consequential for the long term. Society has changed more than usual, I think, such that it can’t be “assumed” Gen Z will become more conservative as they age. For example, many may resist having children. So, there might be a lot more “childless cat ladies” for Banana Republicans to anger.
Heck, I worked in the mainstream media for years and I don't trust it either! ;-)
(They do their best, but the internet has really decimated their budgets and talent pipeline.)
My problem is with the term “trust”. I have moderate confidence that the New York Times provides me with adequate information about what is going on in the world but less confidence that the sum of what they deliver is an attempt at an objective perspective
Is the culprit "the internet", or is it monopolistic Big Tech firms like Google and Facebook?
I agree completely, but I feel education wasn't the cause but merely a side effect. As you say, the cult of personality prizes loyalty above competence. I think what has happened is that we have sorted ourselves out between the "loyal" and the "competent" over the past 50 years or so. Before then, our country was made up of thousands of Bedford Falls types of communities. The loyal and the competent coexisted, whether they liked it or not due to the strong culture. Only the lucky ones got out. Cults of personalities like Mr. Potter ruled, but dreamers like George Bailey were forced to put their ambitions aside due to strong family and community ties. Their existence kept Mr. Potter in check. Had George came of age thirty years later, society would have allowed him to go to college and pursue his ambitions. George probably would have ended up living in a metropolitan suburb with some middle-management job, and his kids would be scattered around the country pursuing their dreams. Also, this version of the American Dream allowed entry to women, minorities, immigrants, etc. All you needed to do was get good grades and go to college. It's not that George was any more competent than anyone else in Bedford Falls, it was that he valued that competence over loyalty. George, his offspring, and all their peers are the "elites" that the people of current-day Bedford Falls (or Pottersville) seem to despise so much. And, this division is what we ended up with.