Epistemic Populism

Claire—I’m pleased to publish another piece by our reader Josh Rosenberg as part of our What’s gone wrong with America? series, in which I’ve invited readers to contribute their thoughts about the sources of the United States’ tragic condition. If you’d like to contribute an essay, send me a note.

The observations Josh makes in this article are rarely made, both because they’re disturbing and because they open the author to charges of elitism, which most writers find unpleasant. This is why it’s all the more important to ask if he might be correct.

Longtime readers of the Cosmopolitan Globalist will hear in his argument a familiar echo. It’s that of the (unrelated) political scientist Shawn Rosenberg, whose work I wrote about in 2019:

Rosenberg argued in a now-famous article titled, “Democracy Devouring Itself: The Rise of the Incompetent Citizen and the Appeal of Populism,” that citizens, generally, lack the cognitive skills for democratic governance:

Drawing on a wide range of research in political science and psychology, I argue that citizens typically do not have the cognitive or emotional capacities required [for democratic governance]. Thus they are typically left to navigate in political reality that is ill-understood and frightening. Populism offers an alternative view of politics and society which is more readily understood and more emotionally satisfying. In this context, I suggest that as practices in countries such as the United States become increasingly democratic, this structural weakness is more clearly exposed and consequential, and the vulnerability of democratic governance to populism becomes greater. The conclusion is that democracy is likely to devour itself.

Much like Rosenberg, Josh sees the cognitive limitations of the citizenry at the heart of our dysfunction. Institutions that were once insulated from the whims of stupid citizens, he argues, must now cater to their demands. Many have heralded these transformations as a salutary democratization of public life. But paradoxically, he argues, the Reign of the Idiots is destroying democracy itself.

* You’ll note, if you read those articles, that Rosenberg had a better grasp of the situation than I did. I was too optimistic.

By Josh Rosenberg

EXPERTS AND ARSONISTS

The ongoing right-wing populist challenge to scientific knowledge and objective truth has deep antecedents in our history. Exactly 100 years ago, the Scopes monkey trial captivated the nation, elevating a debate about how the state should define scientific truth—in accordance with expert consensus,