David DeWitt:
Look around you right now, wherever you are: desks, tables, electronics, electricity, light bulbs, appliances, glassware, furniture, knick-knacks, artwork, paint, carpeting, buildings. All of those things require science, engineering, mathematics, chemistry, physics, logistics, expertise. Experts. Smart people. Smart people gave us all of this.

Intelligence gave us every amazing thing that we see around us and take for granted. The collective education of humankind over millennia has brought us here.

A whole galaxy of humans and human know-how has come together to give us these amenities of daily existence that make the vast majority of us wealthier in health and technology and everyday human comfort than the richest kings and queens and emperors of history.

And yet. We sneer at experts. We spit epithets like “academic elites” at professors dedicating their lives to pursuing discovery that benefits humankind. And we worship flashy internet hucksters selling lifestyle scams. We mock intelligence and glorify egomania and materialism. We crave spectacle and are voyeurs for anger, confrontation, and violence.

It is in these ways that I regard a very great many adults as simply overgrown children.

America’s love affair with swaggering ignorance and confident stupidity continues to reach awful new heights. The bill will come due. The piper will need to be paid. The damage will be extensive.