One of the well-documented pathologies of the Trump administration and the contemporary Republican Party is an opposition to professionalism and expertise. In the Trump administration, this tendency can be found everywhere, from the nomination of incompetent judges to the appointment of Jared Kushner to positions of responsibility over areas about which he knows absolutely nothing. Disregard for expertise is both a key enabler and expression of the president’s authoritarianism: expert opinion gets in the way of imposing the will of the maximum leader, and so must be dismissed and ignored when it doesn’t directly support the president’s whims. Ignoring reality isn’t a great way for a person to live, and it isn’t so great for a country, either: as Exhibit A, witness Donald Trump’s repeated efforts to wish the coronavirus out of existence via happy talk and suppressing basic facts about its spread.
Not insignificantly, suppression of expertise not only enables authoritarianism, but opens the door to its evil twin, corruption; without verifiable or measurable standards, political and spending decisions can be far more easily made based on the personal wishes of the president and allied politicians. As just one example out of many: if the president can lean on health agencies not to speak out decisively against the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat the coronavirus, the president’s cronies can more easily make money off sales of this sham treatment.
But as with other aspects of the danger that Donald Trump and the GOP pose to our country’s future, the attack on expertise can feel both obvious and abstract, something that might be seen as residing in a political realm separate from our daily lives, even as we grasp intuitively how its consequences might rain down on us in a thousand different ways, from higher mercury emissions from coal plants that sicken our friends and family, to money diverted to the president’s allies to build a useless border wall rather than build schools for the children of parents serving in the military.
Lately, though, I’ve been thinking that not only is the war on professionalism actually central to the broader Trump-GOP war on American democracy and society, but that understanding this can help put Americans more in touch with the urgency of the fight we’re in. Not only does discrediting and ignoring expertise and knowledge enable the president to act in ways that serve himself and various constituencies at the expense of the American majority, it’s also a direct threat against anyone who takes pride in their education, training, and professionalism in the workplace.
After all, even while we set up artificial distinctions between what might be considered the realms of politics, economics, and public health — to pick three of the biggest categories of all — the war on professionalism blows past such borders. The president and his allies have every incentive to discredit expertise not only in government, but everywhere it appears – because everywhere it exists, it poses a threat to efforts to raise personal preference and connections over competence and knowledge.
The elevation of grifting and plunder as the highest goals in life is an affront to every American who takes pride in their work, in their dedication, in their personal skills, and in the respect of their peers. The Trumpist attitude is that anyone who has standards, who tries to do the best job they can do, and who treats fellow workers with respect, is simply a chump who doesn’t realize that all you have to do to get ahead is join the team that’s rigging the game.