I can’t be the only one who has noticed that experts are getting a lot of things wrong these days. I don’t want to get political here, but if you start to add up the various whopping blunders of the past few decades, you might start to wonder if anyone knows anything. This is especially true about the experts we’re forced to hear from — on every side of an issue, from both sides of the aisle — when it comes to some seriously consequential stuff. And again, I don’t want to get tendentious, so I’ll leave the specifics to you to fill in for yourself.

Oh, what the hell. Here’s what I mean: COVID masks, mortgage-backed securities, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, carbs, red wine, voter turnout, lard, phonics, and Pluto. (Among others.) Smart people — and I knew some of the folks who were involved in the home finance catastrophe of 2007, and let me assure you that they were smart — seem to be making a lot of costly and dangerous mistakes. It often seems like we’re living through an Age of Blunder.