How Come Trump Dislikes Experts?

Now that the Fake News has given up trying to convince a majority of Americans that Donald Trump is planning to install a Fascist regime, they have come up with a new jeremiad about how Trump’s rejection of expertise will produce a government managed by the likes of Matt Gaetz or worse.

But with all due respect to how we assume that the presence of experts is necessary for keeping the government running on an even course, I’m not so sure that Trump is wrong in this respect, at least when we look at some of the decisions made by experts employed by the government over the years.

Take, for example, the ‘best and the brightest’ (as David Halberstam called the experts) that JFK brought down from Harvard to help him run things beginning in 1961.

What did we get from that bunch which included several Harvard faculty members as well as the University Dean? We got the Viet Nam War. Thanks guys, for all your bright ideas.

Want another example of how and why expertise doesn’t necessarily mean that we end up doing what we should do in public affairs? Try this one, okay?

In 1945, when the Communist revolution in China was sweeping across the countryside, General Joseph Stilwell was ordered to hold a meeting with Chiang Kai-Shek to assess whether the Nationalist government had any chance of winning…