Imagine a surgeon who repeatedly operates on the wrong organ, or a pilot who misses a landing time and time again, maiming and killing scores of passengers. We would revoke their professional licenses, without delay.

  Why then do we tolerate the so-called national security “experts” at the helm of the US government, who pursue, for decades, ruinous policies that cost trillions in hard-earned taxpayer money and countless American lives?

  The Afghanistan collapse has proven that the US government’s ignorance of foreign cultures and mindsets can no longer be tolerated.

-Rebekah Koffler

The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of fear, manufactured by individuals who were in the nominal positions of authority as the virus began to spread across the globe last year, according to Yale epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch...

  “However, the fear was manufactured for everybody. And that’s what’s characterized the whole pandemic is that degree of fear and people’s response to the fear.”...

  The epidemiology professor suggested that individuals who held the nominal positions of authority during the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 initially spread a much worse picture of the “dire nature” of the virus than was warranted, he said.

-Isabel van Brugen and Jan Jekielek

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, when asked months ago about the possibility that there might be a “significant deterioration” of the security picture in Afghanistan once the United States withdrew its forces, said, “I don’t think it’s going to be something that happens from a Friday to a Monday.”...

  Every image coming out of Afghanistan this past weekend was an advertisement for the incompetence, arrogance, and double-dealing nature of American foreign policy leaders.

-Matt Taibbi

Well, now they’ve heard it, and they’ve also heard that a lot of Americans resent the meritocrats’ insulation from what’s happening elsewhere, especially as America’s unfortunate record over the past couple of decades, whether in economics, in politics, or in foreign policy, doesn’t suggest that the “meritocracy” is overflowing with, you know, actual merit.

  In the United States, the result has been Trump. In Britain, the result was Brexit. In both cases, the allegedly elite — who are supposed to be cool, considered, and above the vulgar passions of the masses — went more or less crazy.

  From conspiracy theories (it was the Russians!) to bizarre escape fantasies (A Brexit vote redo! A military coup to oust Trump!) the cognitive elite suddenly didn’t seem especially elite, or for that matter particularly cognitive.

-Glenn Harlan Reynolds

America’s Institutions Have Failed its People...

  It is already clear that, yet again, America’s institutions have failed its people. The blame game has begun even before the last chopper has lifted from the embassy roof. The CIA, the Pentagon and the State Department are whispering that they warned Biden, but he didn’t listen. At Thursday’s press conference, Biden publicly blamed the generals.

The Elites Have Failed Spectacularly...

  ... whether it’s the Boeing 737 Max, opioids, Covid mismanagement, or anything else of social importance. Do we have the competence to govern ourselves anymore? There’s also a follow-on question.

  Will this loss spur genuine reform of our McKinsey-ified elites who failed so spectacularly?

Our Institutions: Thoroughly Unimpressive...

  Impressive results lead to credibility. You have no choice but to respect an institution capable of the Manhattan project or Apollo missions. Even if you disagree with every aspect of it.

  A lot of people alive today probably can’t think of a single impressive thing they’ve seen a modern institution do.

As Woodrow Wilson noted sadly, “The bulk of mankind is rigidly unphilosophical, and nowadays the bulk of mankind votes.” What to do?

  The solution was to shift real power out of elected bodies and into the hands of the right sort of people, enlightened people, progressive people, people, that is to say, like Woodrow Wilson.

-Roger Kimball

Unelected Bureaucrats Creating Crisis After Crisis...

  Washington think tanks and “Beltway bandit” consulting firms are bursting at the seams with “experts” who mucked things up for America by conjuring up “pie-in-the-sky” policy ambitions and wrongheaded warfighting strategies.

  These unelected bureaucrats rotate in and out of the government, dragging our country into endless and unwinnable wars that spill blood and waste our treasure. Few, if any, of these “professionals,” as they like to call themselves, are held accountable for creating crisis after crisis across the globe.

   At this point, no matter how well-meaning the establishment’s desire to remake the world in America’s image by removing every tyrant, every terrorist, and every sign of injustice and poverty, the relentless pursuit of unachievable outcomes is no longer an innocent mistake.

   It is reckless. And it’s professional malpractice.

Covid: The Experts Failed...

  It’s bad enough to deal with a nasty virus. It’s far worse to deal with the sudden end of the stream of life as we know it and then have nothing to show for it.

  Trust is gone and will stay that way for a very long time. The longer the experts who did this to the world refuse to acknowledge and admit their failure, the longer the healing will take.

The Collapse of Afghanistan...

  This malaise feels different. Before, it seemed as if there were forces both vague and specific that caused our ills. History had turned against us.

  Now, it feels entirely self-imposed by a class of managerial technocrats whose indifference is matched only by their incompetance, and a disconnected, destructive, frivilous intellectual class that looks daft and mad to the unwoke.