Book of the month - Who Is Government ed. Michael Lewis
People distrust experts until you need one.
This month the Allnonfiction book discussion group is reading and discussing Who Is Government? ed. Michael Lewis. Please join me there if you would like to participate in the discussion. Otherwise check out the thoughts that the book stimulates that seem worth sharing here on davidgmarkham.substack.com
Then he (Trump) appointed Rick Perry as his secretary of energy. In his own presidential campaign, Perry had called for the Energy Department’s elimination—and was forced, at his Senate confirmation hearings, to acknowledge that he’d had no real idea of what went on inside the Energy Department, but now that he’d spent a few days looking into it, he really did not want to eliminate it. At that moment, it became clear that none of these people, newly in charge of the United States government, had the faintest idea what it did. (The Energy Department, among its other critical functions, manages our nuclear weapons.)
Lewis, Michael. Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service (pp. xi-xii). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Autocrats seek to destroy the repositories of knowledge, skills, values, and competence because they undermine the autocrats authority and credibility. Most of the federal government agencies derisively called “the deep state” are deliberately rendered impotent by sycophants of the autocrat so as to bring them into alignment with loyalty to the leader rather than to truth, accuracy, and competence. These are the times we are living in in the US in 2025.
The common citizen dislikes experts unless they need their expertise because they do not like being subordinate to truth and competence. They would rather be “free.” They would rather be free to harm themselves and others as long as they can maintain their egoistic sense of autonomy.
What is needed in the US in this age is humility and the willingness to acknowledge that some people do know better than others, that not everyone’s opinion is as good as everyone else’s, and that there are certain people who really do know what they are talking about.
It has been said that we are living in a “post truth world” where the truth no longer matters and that lies are the means to power, social status and wealth.
Wherein lies your expertise? Who are the experts that you have consulted with in your life and to whom you are grateful. When has someone from the government helped you?