Over four years ago, I wrote that the large arc of social change we are experiencing represents the breakdown of the Enlightenment era that has occurred over time. The distrust of expertise that we are witnessing now is evidence of that breakdown.
The current move to the right counters the protest movement in the 1960s, when those on the left challenged the white patriarchy that was deeply embedded in social, religious, and economic institutions. Those advocating change noted that post-WWII prosperity had not been experienced equally across racial and gender lines. Environmental degradation revealed negative impacts of industrialization from extracting and burning fossil fuels and the widespread use of chemicals.
Today’s turn to the right seeks to reclaim many of the assumptions challenged by the counter-cultural movement in the ‘60s, with little attempt to disguise the reassertion of white Christian patriarchy. What many of us view as social progress over the last six decades is being quickly dismantled by the Trump administration, with the support of blue color workers who felt left behind by what they perceived as a liberal elite agenda marked by identity politics.
People across the political spectrum feel that American institutions are broken, as they see health care, housing, education, government, and the economy itself serve the interests of wealthy Americans at the expense of the middle and lower classes. But along with challenging those institutions, those on the right are also rejecting institutional knowledge and expertise.
The Enlightenment followed a Scientific Revolution, and both marked a turn to rationalism and empirical evidence as sources of knowledge, replacing religious faith and superstition. This movement elevated reason, and all areas of study became the subject of scholarship aimed at objective, verifiable knowledge—standards that continue to define the scholarly process.
Rigorous research, supported by peer review, has yielded great advances in knowledge in the past few centuries, transforming modern institutions. That scholarly standard is so widely accepted that poor methodology, plagiarism, and other shortcuts have ended the careers of public figures as well as scholars.
But social media has allowed the rapid spread of conspiracy theories that reject long-established knowledge. The embrace of those ideas by conservative news sources and politicians has resulted in widespread distrust of institutions that rely on evidenced-based research and the rejection of laws, policies, and medical protocols based on such expertise.
Some of the earliest cracks emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, as President Donald Trump dispensed his own medical advice that often contradicted doctors and scientists. More recently, Trump linked autism to Tylenol and vaccines, a view popularized by his Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a conspiracy theorist and vaccine skeptic with no medical training. This comes on the heels of Kennedy replacing members of a vaccine safety panel with people who have criticized vaccines and spread misinformation, and the departure of top scientists at the Centers for Disease Control after the director was fired for “standing up for science.”
Donald Trump made it clear that his second administration would be comprised of loyalists who would do his bidding, and most of them have little expertise in the areas they oversee. Many, like Kennedy, are renowned critics or skeptics of those fields. Rather than protecting all citizens, the government now serves the president’s ego and the interests of his wealthy cronies.
The administration has discredited climate science, promoting fossil fuel expansion and ignoring the scientific consensus that we will only avert catastrophic climate change by a rapid transition to renewable energy sources. Information disseminated by the Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and other agencies can no longer be trusted to represent credible science. Not only does this stall climate action, but it hampers accurate forecasting, posing more imminent danger from severe weather.
This rejection of expertise cuts across fields. The president has expressed displeasure with the chair of the Federal Reserve for not lowering interest rates, casting doubt on the wisdom of this board comprising top economists. Requiring that museums promote a more positive view of history rejects the works of scholarship documenting stories on the margins that were left out of the mainstream narrative.
Trump disguises these attacks on long established knowledge, referring to anything he disagrees with as “fake news,” “hoaxes,” or “con jobs” and claiming that whatever his administration promotes is the truth. In May, he issued an executive order “Restoring Gold Standard Science,” which claims that the prior administration had “politicized science . . . by encouraging agencies to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion considerations.” The order cites specific disagreements with COVID-19 policies and environmental positions that were harmful to business and reasserts white supremacy. Branding incorrect information as “Gold Standard Science” only enhances such propaganda, which has already been supercharged by social media and far-right pundits (see previous posts).
We are witnessing the dismantling of actual gold standard science and the promotion of information that clearly serves the interests of white, wealthy Americans and endangers the lives and health of people around the globe. And make no mistake, people will die. They will die from diseases that vaccines have controlled for decades, they will die by violence perpetrated against people this administration portrays as dangerous “others,” and they will die in weather and climate-related events that scientific knowledge could prevent or help us prepare for.
I wrote the post describing the breakdown of the Enlightenment era in January 2021, as Joe Biden took office, and I was hopeful that he could move us toward more just and sustainable institutions. Indeed he tried, but the pushback from those resisting change was strong enough to sweep Trump back into office and enable him to undo decades of social progress.
Placing this moment in historical context does not assuage the pain and fear many of us feel as we see leaders disregard life-saving scientific advances and put our most vulnerable people in danger. But taking the long view allows us to understand this resistance as part of the unsteady movement toward a better world. 1
- Author and former pastor Brian McLaren comments on the anxiety we feel at such times in a short video posted soon after the 2024 election. He claims that the world of domination, greed, and violence is dying, and like a dying, cornered animal, it will destroy as much as it can before it dies. But, he says, something else is trying to be born, and that can give us hope. ↩︎