Public hostility toward elite experts faded only when the triggering crisis ended

Evidence

Feeling disrespected by the Courant, Cotton Mather demanded intellectual obedience like a tired college professor. The general public ignored him and withdrew. Bostonians’ distaste for Mather and Boylston improved only when the epidemic that killed 842 people finally ended in early 1722. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 184

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s core inversion: powerful figures (Mather) demand obedience while the public disengages — a dynamic of authority rather than of racist ideas per se, useful for bounding where the inversion does and doesn’t operate. — connects to: The crisis of democracy grabbed defenders only after measurable warning signs accumulated — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 366