Trump has "normalized lying to an unprecedented degree," Hayden writes in a New York Times op-ed, adding: "In this post-truth world, intelligence agencies are in the bunker with some unlikely mates: journalism, academia, the courts, law enforcement and science ‐ all of which, like intelligence gathering, are evidence-based. Intelligence shares a broader duty with these other truth-tellers to preserve the commitment and ability of our society to base important decisions on our best judgment of what constitutes objective reality."
There’s some irony there, given how intelligence agencies have used journalists and academics to advance their agendas. But we’ll set that aside. While professionals in these fields should base their work in careful and dispassionate analysis of facts, logic and evidence, they’ll encounter two problems. First, rising within many of these institutions requires political acumen in at least equal proportion to merit. Second, progressives dominate in most of these fields ‐ if you do not conform you are unlikely to survive.
Those who exhibit intellectual honesty and follow truth wherever it leads them, even when it flies in the face of the views of their superiors, are frequently punished. This is especially so if the relevant work is deemed detrimental to the aims of the bureaucracies in which they serve. Increasingly of course, we see all of these areas politicized in myriad ways. These same rules apply in politics as politics.