The narrative of history and, more importantly, of the present that they offer has gone viral, offering comfort to its audience and a substantial economic benefit to its creators in the form of newsletter subscriptions and book deals. While it seems cruel to challenge anyone’s source of comfort in this very disquieting age and is certainly unkind to question academics pursuing alternate income streams, it is time we start to question the narrative of history that has been so widely adopted by many Americans and ask whether this particular fantasy of the past is providing any benefit in our increasingly dystopian present. In particular, there is an insistence among these figures that the past is something to be mined for lessons about how to survive the rising tide of authoritarianism and fascism. It’s a compelling premise. But a decade into what future historians may very well term the “Trump Era,” it’s still not precisely clear what use the past is to understanding—let alone escaping—the current predicament.
The Resist! Historians, as you might call them, would not be possible if not for the American center-left’s increasingly romantic view of expertise. It (and the Democratic Party) have over the past 30 years come to be dominated by the most well-educated: Roughly 60 percent of people with graduate degrees lean blue. The nation’s best students are now collected in one political corner utterly unwilling to question the teacher’s competence. She is, after all, the teacher.
This shift has also been catalyzed by the American right’s increasingly dangerous anti-intellectualism, which in part drove their political opponents to a sometimes exaggerated deference to credentialed authority—a deference that often ignores the fact that experts frequently disagree with each other. Take, for example, the progressive rallying cry to “Believe science.” This certainly seems to be a good idea, especially on clearly settled topics such as the efficiency of vaccines and the reality of climate change. But what about those issues where the science—and more importantly the scientists—deeply disagree? Who exactly are we trusting then? After all, there are good faith, legitimate debates occurring around issues ranging from the effects and efficiency of long-term psychiatric drug use in children to support options for autistic people to the ethics of AI. None of this is settled, and experts—credentialed experts—disagree.