Book Review/Heather Seggel

Check Your Bias, Save the World

Howard Burton has written three books, and is the founder and host of “Ideas Roadshow,” a digital media project where he interviews experts across a range of subjects. I mention this biographic detail up top because it is relevant throughout his latest book, “Exceptionally Upsetting: How Americans are Increasingly Confusing Knowledge with Opinion, & What Can Be Done About It” (Open Agenda Publishing). It has an awkward, punny title and cumbersome subtitle, but is witty, provocative, and rigorous in its arguments. I loved it.

Burton, a Canadian living in France, has strong opinions about America today. He singles out our tendency to devalue subject matter expertise as the cause of our long slide into partisan conflict. To make the point explicit, he selects three values Americans tend to consider central to our identity — democracy, freedom, and capitalism — and scrutinizes them via the historical record of their creation. Viewed in that light, and not the maxims we often use as shorthand for understanding, things get understandably complex. He provides copious links to free versions of the sources he cites (the Federalist Papers and Anti-Federalist Papers get a workout here), as a reminder that the information is there for the taking. The problem is that we would just prefer to stay in our opinion silos much of the time.

The writing in these three sections is a heady kick to engage with, but maybe that’s because I’m as guilty of leaning on incorrect but common ideas as the next person. Seeing the thought process behind the creation of the Constitution and how emphatically the founders wished to steer us away from democracy was a revelation, as was exploring our very limiting, ironically blinkered ideas about freedom (I’d feel a lot more free living somewhere that doesn’t take the possibility of being gunned down at work, school, home, or the movies for granted). It’s edifying to follow along as our collective beliefs are eviscerated with trademarked Canadian politeness. Popular thinking about capitalism is undone with a tablecloth-snappling flourish by the words of Adam Smith himself. A truly wild cameo appearance by Tucker Carlson (acting as a broken clock and being right one of his allocated two times per day) and gentle humor throughout make for a pleasantly percolating good time.

Seeing concepts taken apart and reassembled like this can feel destabilizing. More than once the thought nagging me was, “If so much of this is news to me, what else am I getting wrong?” The solution Burton proposes is in part inspired by his work with “Ideas Roadshow”: A non-profit, emphatically nonpartisan network that disseminates the work and theories of experts across a range of subjects, using the American university system to source and create its curriculum. He addresses potential questions and arguments (no, he is not hoping to run such a program himself), after which it’s easy to envision such a program being created and implemented. But to what end?

If I understand his intent, Burton’s wish is for this network to reestablish expertise as a baseline that is universally understood to be of value and respected. He’s very clear about keeping elitism at bay and respecting multiple points of view, but is trying to reassert the difference between knowledge and opinion. Were his ideas to be built and enacted at warp speed without sacrificing quality, though, I still struggle to see how they would make the change he’s seeking. The volume of credible information available free online is already overwhelming and could in all likelihood be gathered into an encyclopedic reference made up solely of the work of experts in their subject matter. But how does that displace algorithms that lure us to conspiracy theories, or distrust in systems that may in fact deserve scrutiny?

Of course, there are no easy answers, but this feels like an earnest step in the right direction. The title pokes fun at American “exceptionalism,” the notion that we are somehow bigger and better, smarter and faster than all the other nations on the playground. While it remains true that we have tremendous resources at our disposal and much to be proud of, the past few years have seen us accelerate into something less exceptional and more fast, cheap, and out of control. And it is upsetting! Many of our elected officials are still lying about the outcome of the last election as a fundraising tactic, but their constituents believe them and are furious and, as we’ve seen, dangerous. Can we rebuild a common reality at this point? I don’t have high hopes, but do agree that we have an obligation to try.

Heather Seggel is a writer living in Northern California. Email heatherlseggel@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, June 1, 2021

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