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.
Here’s a noncontroversial example from history: say what you like about the brutal Stalinist regime of the (thankfully late) German Democratic Republic, but they were pretty good about spying on their own citizens. The secret police — called, with that German flair for romantic horror, the Stasi — had wiretaps everywhere. The whole country was informing on one another. If someone sneezed at dinner, the Stasi knew about it the next day. They knew everything there was to know about the German Democratic Republic except that it was about to collapse. Which was the one thing they really needed to know. Talk about the Age of Blunder!
I’m not trying to offend #teamerichhonecker here, honest, just pointing out that we always assume the other guy has it all figured out — Lehman Brothers has got this value-at-risk situation nailed! Close the schools and teach on Zoom! The Stasi have the GDR wired, let me tell you! — until it all comes tumbling down and we’re left with the disquieting feeling that maybe, just maybe, nobody knows much of anything.
This past weekend, I was having dinner with some old friends in Manhattan, and we were talking about what precautions — if any — we were taking in anticipation of the huge snowstorm that the “experts” were predicting for this week. “I guess I’ll move my car to the garage,” a friend of mine said with a shrug. “I mean, is it really going to snow all that much, or is this one of those things where we cancel everything and rearrange our lives and then it’s like, flurries for an hour?”
“I don’t think so,” another friend chimed in. “They’re saying it’s going to be bad.”
“They!” Another friend, who is not a meteorologist, scoffed. “Who is this they? I’m looking at those weather maps online, and it looks like it’s going to skirt around us and head north. I’ll bet we don’t even get enough for a decent snowman!”
My worried friend was inconsolable. “My kids’ school has already announced they’re closing Monday and maybe Tuesday.”
At which point we all rolled our eyes as if to say, Of course they are! And we all know why, too! Nobody wants to work anymore!
And we went merrily along with our dinner, chatting enthusiastically about how stupid all of those so-called experts are, and how weather forecasters always get it wrong, and what’s up with that these days? It’s like we’re all living in the Age of Blunder. It was a lovely dinner with friends, and we all went home Saturday night happily fed and satisfied.
Sunday morning, my car was buried under a three-foot snowdrift, and I discovered that my front door was iced shut. Two feet of snow cascaded down that day — actually, 26 inches, almost exactly as predicted — and church service was moved online, restaurants were shuttered, roads were treacherously slick, schools were closed, and everyone was snowed in for at least a day. The experts, it seemed, had gotten it right.
Which was reassuring. Especially because on Saturday night I stopped on the way home to pick up some snowed-in essentials — Belgian beer, ice cream, butane for my cigar lighter, two high-end frozen pizzas, and six bags of Cool Ranch Doritos. Unlike the Stasi, I was prepared for anything.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer, including as a screenwriter and executive producer on Cheers, and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
