Perhaps of interest here: How America Lost Faith in Expertise
It’s not just that people don’t know a lot about science or politics or geography. They don’t, but that’s an old problem. The bigger concern today is that Americans have reached a point where ignorance—at least regarding what is generally considered established knowledge in public policy—is seen as an actual virtue. To reject the advice of experts is to assert autonomy, a way for Americans to demonstrate their independence from nefarious elites—and insulate their increasingly fragile egos from ever being told they’re wrong.
People lost faith in expertise because experts sold their influence in support of agendas. Despite the incessant claims of the liberal elite that most people are uneducated and stupid, everyone does have an innate instinct with regards to when they are being told half-truths to manipulate them into a decision.
Used car salesmen come across as greasy for a reason.
To put it another way, someone who has read every published study on a particular topic, and who enters a conversation with someone they believe to be stupid, and then selectively presents the information from all of those studies in such a way as to manipulate that person into a decision, could conclude that anyone not coming to that decision is an idiot or is irrational.
The error being made there is that just because the audience can't articulate exactly how it is being deceived, doesn't mean it doesn't know it is being deceived.
Regardless of how much you agree with the agenda in question, you cannot honestly claim that any establishment at this point is just out there telling it straight. The very concept of political science has become, in essence, the science of manipulation. The backlash against that has been messy, true. It was entirely predictable, and it is not irrational.
I will always be skeptical of any expert that whores themself out to a political party. My lack of trust has to do with their inherent untrustworthiness, not some lack of education on my part.
Coming to me with a story, and then stamping your feet because I don't believe you, because how could I possibly not believe, it isn't like I might have information you don't?
That's how a child reacts when their manipulation fails. This is how the left is reacting to their failed manipulation. This is also, by the by, how the right is reacting.
I know you ate the cookie. The cookies are gone. Only the two of us had access to the cookies. I didn't eat the cookie.
You have an elaborate story where it also wasn't you who ate the cookie, and you told it to me. But the thing is I do know I didn't eat the cookie. And I know the cookie is gone. So you, Mr. Four-your-old who can't see the chocolate on his face, you are busted.