The new method of journalism is to wake up, scratch yourself, announce this is what I think and then find someone who agrees with you to cite as an "expert." This honorific is generally given either to slobbering simpletons, like John Brennan, or anonymous nobodies on the left. If you see "expert," you should assume the person is not an expert, and probably not even a person.
Here's how to do a story on "water isn't wet" in less than 40 minutes:
Get a college professor on the phone.
Hello. I'm from The New York Times and I'm looking to quote an expert saying water's not wet.
That is correct, water is not wet.
Why?
Because it isn't.
Is this something you've studied?
Oh my gosh -- I'm a world-renowned expert.
To your editor: I've got an expert saying water isn't wet.
Do you have more than one?
Throw a rock out the window, hit someone. Hey! Sorry about the rock. I've got a question for you. Is water wet? Yes? Ask the guy next to you. Got it, perfect.
Headline: "Water Not Wet, Experts Say."
Nowhere is the explosion of phony experts more annoying than in the bloated ranks of foreign policy hacks. It's as if the world decided to solve the problem of "elite overproduction" by creating a full employment program for them as government bureaucrats and quotation providers.
Thus, a recent Times article accused Donald Trump of "Flying Blind" by stripping the government of high-quality intelligence experts, horrifyingly, just as he's trying to end the Russia-Ukraine war. Instead of relying on experts, as other (obviously better) presidents have, Trump, the Times reports, "has taken a different approach ...: He's fired them."
Meaning he will not be deferring to people whose sole objective in life is being quoted in the Times. Without losing accuracy, the cited authorities could all be identified as professors of Trump-Hating.
To prove what a nightmare Trump's housecleaning is, the Times quotes the very sort of experts he's sidelining. Evelyn N. Farkas at the McCain Institute in Washington, D.C. (very confidence-inspiring) said of the expert-less administration: "They're flying blind without the expertise." Amazingly, that's just what the Times thought.
Because only true "expertise" could get us to spend $2.313 trillion over two decades to turn Afghanistan into the exact same country it was when we invaded -- except with an extra $7.1 billion in U.S.-made weapons -- or, in a mere three years, cost us $180 billion and tens of thousands of dead Ukrainians in order to give Vladimir Putin an even stronger hand than when he first invaded. (Hey, maybe we're getting better at this!)
New definition of "expert" updated by me 10 seconds ago: "Someone who agrees with us, preferably who's been repeatedly proved egregiously wrong."
Farkas says the Trump rejects "have seen all the intelligence relating to Vladimir Putin's intentions. They have spies on the ground. They know all kinds of information that's gained through technical means." OK, but eventually we're going to need an example of something these guys caught that won't be caught now. Otherwise, it's more like: "Titanic shareholders strip their back-office of iceberg experts."
The Times is especially alarmed that Trump has "purged experts" from the National Security Council. Yes, the same NSC that is so chockablock with experts that Joe Biden added a special envoy on climate. Please God, tell me Trump didn't fire that guy. Because whenever I worry about keeping America safe from deranged autocrats, my first thought is, "How's the weather?"
As if Trump is nursing some ancient grudge, like the Greeks and the Turks, the Times describes the pink-slipped NSC experts as those who worked on the "nearly decade-old investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election."
Of course, the reason it's a decade old is that these nincompoops have been noodling almost nothing else for the past decade, rather than, say, wondering if Hamas had anything up its sleeve. It took these experts 10 years to prove that the Russians did not steal the 2016 election. It only took me about 20 minutes.
We all should hold a grudge against those guys.
Where did the Russian interference yarn come from, anyway? It was cooked up by Barack Obama's director of national intelligence and admitted perjurer James Clapper to distract from the cache of DNC emails released by Wikileaks -- no connection to Russia -- that were extremely embarrassing to Hillary Clinton. That's what highly trained expertise gets you.
The Times' final water-is-not-wet expert is Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer, meaning he knows less about what's going on in the world than anyone who was not a CIA agent. Polymeropoulos, according to the Times, said "Mr. Trump did not want to hear intelligence reports about Russia's bad acts" and blamed Laura Loomer for the expert bloodbath.
Amazingly, that was just what the Times thought! Has The New York Times ever attributed expertise to anyone it disagrees with?
Put aside the fact that Polymeropoulos was a "long-time Middle East specialist" -- and there hasn't been a ruffled feather over there since then. Also put aside his claim that after living all over the world, when he finally went to Russia in December 2017, he "experienced panic and helplessness for the first time." Sounds very stable and reassuring.
This guy claims he has "Havana Syndrome," a well-known psychosomatic hysteria. It's the male version of long-haul COVID.
How is Trump going to function without high-level experts like these?
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