Esteban del Mal's Reviews > Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free

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Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free
by Charles P. Pierce

Esteban del Mal's review

Jul 27, 10

3 of 5 stars

bookshelves: americana, non-fiction, when-the-world-was-new

Read from July 17 to 27, 2010 — I own a copy, read count: 1

Facts are a matter of opinion and opinion is shaped by the most adept, if cracked, demagogues. Still, hasn't it always been thus?

"Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about." -- Mark Twain

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Reading Progress

07/17/2010	page 45	15.0%	"He's preaching to the choir, but I really like his voice."
07/22/2010	page 125	41.0%	"Rules for modern pundits (devised by Professor Andrew Cline of Missouri State University): 1. Never be dull; 2. Embrace willfully ignorant simplicity; 3. The American public is stupid -- treat them that way; 4. Always ignore the facts and the public record when it is convenient to do so."
07/24/2010	page 200	66.0%	"Science leads you to killing people. -- Ben Stein"
07/27/2010	page 270	89.0%	"But Idiot America is a collaborative effort, the results of millions of decisions made and not made, to reduce everything to salesmanship. Debate becomes corrupted argument, in which every point of view is just another product, no better or worse than all the others, and informed citizenship is abandoned to the marketplace."
07/27/2010	page 299	98.0%	"The marketplace of ideas -- once as unruly as a Moroccan bazaar -- has become as regimented in its design and operation as any Wal-Mart. We know by instinct now in which aisles we can find the products that make us the most comfortable. Expertise is distrusted, competence derided, reason disrespected."