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Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free
by Charles P. Pierce
by Charles P. Pierce
This turned out to be one of the most partisan books I've read in years, but was still helpful in putting words to the climate of Idiocracy that's risen to prominence in the US, and to some extent Canada. The book lays much of the blame at the feet of conservatives and religious extremists (i.e. evangelical christians, right-to-lifers, etc), but there's plenty of blame to go around.
Most worrying is the trend toward "gut feeling" (later called "truthiness" by Stephen Colbert) over facts and reality. If it "feels" right and it moves the needle in terms of sales, viewers, listeners, etc, then it's determined to be more valid than anything an "elitist" intellectual would have you believe. This is the America where 40% of the populace believes in ghosts, 78% believe in angels, and more people believe in horoscopes than they do evolution.
The book examines this break down of reason and the trend away from the "reality-based community" and towards faith or the Gut by recounting some of the major inflection points from the last ~200 years. Selected anecdotes from the founding fathers all the way up to Terri Schiavo, Guantanamo, the Iraq war, JFK, and more are used to make the book's points.
One pervasive misgiving I had about the book was that it fell somewhere in between being a laundry list of anecdotal examples and a systematic, chronological account of how Idiot America came to be. A great example of the latter technique is Amusing Ourselves to Death (one of my all-time favourite books), wherein Neil Postman illustrates how the nature of public discourse has changed as a result of media, starting with the telegraph and ending with the television. Idiot America never makes the connections between each incident the way Postman's book does, which leaves each chapter as a prolonged anecdotal example. Ultimately this feels less fulfilling and lacks the analytical bent of Postman's book.
If I didn't find Idiot America all so horribly depressing in terms of what it means for the future of critical debate, free thinking, skepticism, reason, intellect, facts and reality, I'd write more. But instead, here are some illustrative quotes from the book. Please read them! They'll give you a great idea of what the book's about.
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture." - Pastor Ray Mummert defending the Dover, PA school board's attempt to get "intelligent design" taught in high school biology classes.
"...a little over a century ago, this cardinal idea (creationism) came under wholesale attack by intellectuals drawing on the discoveries of modern science." - Discovery Institute, a christian conservative think tank responsible for "Teach the Controversy."
"...(the Left, etc) represent the reality-based community... (people who believe) that solutions emerge from judicious study of discernible reality... That's not the way the world works anymore." - Karl Rove, Chief of Staff for the Bush administration
"Because there are two sides to every question, they both must be right, or at least not wrong. And the words of an obscure biologist carry no more weight on the subject of biology than do the thunderations of some turkeyneck preacher out of the Church of Christ's Own Parking Structure in DeLand, Florida. Less weight, in fact, because our scientist is an "expert" and, therefore, an "elitist."" - Quote from the book
"In 2003, the psychologist Paul Ginnetty examined this dynamic in Newsday, focusing on Limbaugh's show but analyzing the appeal of the entire genre, what he called "the potent narcotic of reassuring simplicity."" - Dealing with the subject of removing nuance from a concept in favor of dismissive (and untrue) rhetoric. Read the whole Ginnetty article here: http://bit.ly/eeb1kK
"He has risen to prominence by the seemingly limitless means of being sure of everything about which you actually know very little. You pitch it to the Gut, is what you do." - The book, discussing how Sean Hannity (and most right-wing talk show or TV hosts, IMO) rely on "gut" or "truthiness" over facts to make their arguments against the intellectual "elite."
And the best quote on this subject, which is actually from another book...
"The case against intellect is founded on a set of fictional and wholly abstract antagonisms. Intellect is pitted against feeling, on the ground that it is somehow inconsistent with warm emotion. It is pitted against character, because it is widely believed that intellect stands for mere cleverness, which transmutes easily into the sly and diabolical. It is pitted against practicality, since theory is held to be opposed to practice. It is pitted against democracy, since intellect is felt to be a form of distinction that defies egalitarianism Once the validity of those antagonisms is accepted then the case for intellect… is lost.” - Richard Hofstadter, author of Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
Most worrying is the trend toward "gut feeling" (later called "truthiness" by Stephen Colbert) over facts and reality. If it "feels" right and it moves the needle in terms of sales, viewers, listeners, etc, then it's determined to be more valid than anything an "elitist" intellectual would have you believe. This is the America where 40% of the populace believes in ghosts, 78% believe in angels, and more people believe in horoscopes than they do evolution.
The book examines this break down of reason and the trend away from the "reality-based community" and towards faith or the Gut by recounting some of the major inflection points from the last ~200 years. Selected anecdotes from the founding fathers all the way up to Terri Schiavo, Guantanamo, the Iraq war, JFK, and more are used to make the book's points.
One pervasive misgiving I had about the book was that it fell somewhere in between being a laundry list of anecdotal examples and a systematic, chronological account of how Idiot America came to be. A great example of the latter technique is Amusing Ourselves to Death (one of my all-time favourite books), wherein Neil Postman illustrates how the nature of public discourse has changed as a result of media, starting with the telegraph and ending with the television. Idiot America never makes the connections between each incident the way Postman's book does, which leaves each chapter as a prolonged anecdotal example. Ultimately this feels less fulfilling and lacks the analytical bent of Postman's book.
If I didn't find Idiot America all so horribly depressing in terms of what it means for the future of critical debate, free thinking, skepticism, reason, intellect, facts and reality, I'd write more. But instead, here are some illustrative quotes from the book. Please read them! They'll give you a great idea of what the book's about.
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture." - Pastor Ray Mummert defending the Dover, PA school board's attempt to get "intelligent design" taught in high school biology classes.
"...a little over a century ago, this cardinal idea (creationism) came under wholesale attack by intellectuals drawing on the discoveries of modern science." - Discovery Institute, a christian conservative think tank responsible for "Teach the Controversy."
"...(the Left, etc) represent the reality-based community... (people who believe) that solutions emerge from judicious study of discernible reality... That's not the way the world works anymore." - Karl Rove, Chief of Staff for the Bush administration
"Because there are two sides to every question, they both must be right, or at least not wrong. And the words of an obscure biologist carry no more weight on the subject of biology than do the thunderations of some turkeyneck preacher out of the Church of Christ's Own Parking Structure in DeLand, Florida. Less weight, in fact, because our scientist is an "expert" and, therefore, an "elitist."" - Quote from the book
"In 2003, the psychologist Paul Ginnetty examined this dynamic in Newsday, focusing on Limbaugh's show but analyzing the appeal of the entire genre, what he called "the potent narcotic of reassuring simplicity."" - Dealing with the subject of removing nuance from a concept in favor of dismissive (and untrue) rhetoric. Read the whole Ginnetty article here: http://bit.ly/eeb1kK
"He has risen to prominence by the seemingly limitless means of being sure of everything about which you actually know very little. You pitch it to the Gut, is what you do." - The book, discussing how Sean Hannity (and most right-wing talk show or TV hosts, IMO) rely on "gut" or "truthiness" over facts to make their arguments against the intellectual "elite."
And the best quote on this subject, which is actually from another book...
"The case against intellect is founded on a set of fictional and wholly abstract antagonisms. Intellect is pitted against feeling, on the ground that it is somehow inconsistent with warm emotion. It is pitted against character, because it is widely believed that intellect stands for mere cleverness, which transmutes easily into the sly and diabolical. It is pitted against practicality, since theory is held to be opposed to practice. It is pitted against democracy, since intellect is felt to be a form of distinction that defies egalitarianism Once the validity of those antagonisms is accepted then the case for intellect… is lost.” - Richard Hofstadter, author of Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
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