Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free (Anchor Books)

Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free (Anchor Books) Review

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This is not a real review, but I quoted an excerpt from the book itself, in which the author explains why his book is biased against conservatives and right, and because of the many critical reviews mocking this injury, this part the book may explain why the author chose to focus on the right. Perhaps it will help: "One word, then politics. "We believe that most readers that politics in this book concerns the various activitiesof modern American law. It seems to work something like a piece with Richard Hoftstadter in 1960 to do. However, there is a period of unprecedented monopoly of modern American conservatism - what some call the "conservative movement" - the emerging government institutions. "From the long, slow march from the debacle of the Goldwater campaign in 1964 with the victory of Ronald Reagan and the final consolidation of power under George W. Bush2000-2008 at all on how closely the movement itself attached to the edge of economic irrationality popular religion. The movement swallowed whole doctrine of Quack supply-side economics, the assumption is almost comically ferocious zeal. "The movement licked Reagan stories of another world, as famous as he helped liberate the Nazi death camps, although he spent most of World War II to defend the bar of the Brown Derby. It was thereforewilling to purchase the whole idea of George W. Bush, his brush-clearing cowboy who was afraid of horses. He attached the wildest of religious differences sometimes cynical and sometimes not. In one memorable occasion, in 2005, as the controversy over Intelligent Design has been heating the rule in the media, The New Republic questioned some of the leading conservative intellectuals in the country, on the theory of evolution. Pandit said the paleoconservative Pat Buchananflatly that he does not believe in the Darwinian evolutionary theory, but admitted a number of others, a radical preference for them. Jonah Goldberg, for one, despite its known strong distrust priestly experts use science to discredit traditional notions of faith, was particularly clear on this matter. But intelligent design - with its "scientific implication of a deity - was under discussion, an exhibition of cast broken tap was not as in, as we have seen Gene Kellyin On the Town. "Norman Podhoretz, the godfather of neoconservatism, told the journalist who asked him if he personally believed in evolution" is impossible to answer with a simple yes or no. "And Tucker Carlson, MSNBC host seemed to chase all your opinion on Olduvai Gorge. The question of whether God created man in his present form," said Carlson, "I do not know if he created man in his present form .... I do not discount at all. I do not know the answer. IPut it this way: The only thing I'm confident to say, I am sure that God created everything. "In June 2007, a Gallup poll showed that 68 percent of Republicans polled said they do not believe in evolution at all. And this was the rising political power of the moment. "Conservative movement was so successful that have their own media, especially conservative talk radio and left again brought the enthusiasm of the movement, energize further. L 'Movement for comparison was ideal gift for media disputes led ratings that prompted the dispute properly, and so on. More traditional media joined in, dressed as always of power and success. The more the movement succeeded politically closer to the top that has helped power was connected. The functionality of September 11 attacks has been what people would call the arson team, an accelerator of fire. Even popular culture has gone for the ride. Thevague conspiracies were left-liberal mode of X-Files torture porn of 24. "It 's been a cycle, stronger, until an assistant White House (Karl Rove says he's) open the journalist Ron Suskind in 2004 and gave him the money for the entire period. Suskind and others like him, who adjutant said, "are reality-based community", ie, the type of people who believe "that reasonable solutions can be seen from the study showReality ... This is not the way the world does not work anymore. "This book seems to focus on the activities of modern American is because it is the modern American law, adopted irrationality as a conscious tactic, and it was very good."

Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free (Anchor Books) Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLERThe three Great Premises of Idiot America:· Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units· Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough· Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it With his trademark wit and insight, veteran journalist Charles Pierce delivers a gut-wrenching, side-splitting lament about the glorification of ignorance in the United States. Pierce asks how a country founded on intellectual curiosity has somehow deteriorated into a nation of simpletons more apt to vote for an American Idol contestant than a presidential candidate. But his thunderous denunciation is also a secret call to action, as he hopes that somehow, being intelligent will stop being a stigma, and that pinheads will once again be pitied, not celebrated. Erudite and razor-sharp, Idiot America is at once an invigorating history lesson, a cutting cultural critique, and a bullish appeal to our smarter selves.

Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free (Anchor Books) Specifications

Book DescriptionThe Culture Wars Are Over and the Idiots Have Won.

A veteran journalist's acidically funny, righteously angry lament about the glorification of ignorance in the United States.

In the midst of a career-long quest to separate the smart from the pap, Charles Pierce had a defining moment at the Creation Museum in Kentucky, where he observed a dinosaur. Wearing a saddle... But worse than this was when the proprietor exclaimed to a cheering crowd, “We are taking the dinosaurs back from the evolutionists!” He knew then and there it was time to try and salvage the Land of the Enlightened, buried somewhere in this new Home of the Uninformed.

With his razor-sharp wit and erudite reasoning, Pierce delivers a gut-wrenching, side-splitting lament about the glorification of ignorance in the United States, and how a country founded on intellectual curiosity has somehow deteriorated into a nation of simpletons more apt to vote for an American Idol contestant than a presidential candidate.

With Idiot America, Pierce's thunderous denunciation is also a secret call to action, as he hopes that somehow, being intelligent will stop being a stigma, and that pinheads will once again be pitied, not celebrated.

A Q&A with Charles P. PierceQuestion: What inspired, or should I say drove, you to write Idiot America?Charles P. Pierce: The germ of the idea came as I watched the extended coverage of the death of Terri Schiavo. I wondered how so many people could ally themselves with so much foolishness despite the fact that it was doing them no perceptible good, politically or otherwise. And it looked like the national media simply could not help itself but be swept along. This started me thinking and, when I read a clip in the New York Times about the Creation Museum, I pitched an idea to Mark Warren, my editor at Esquire, that said simply, “Dinosaurs with saddles.” What we determined the theme of the eventual piece—and of the book—would be was “The Consequences Of Believing Nonsense.”

Question: You visited the Creation Museum while writing Idiot America. Describe your experience there. What was your first thought when you saw a dinosaur with a saddle on its back?Charles P. Pierce: My first thought was that it was hilarious. My second thought was that I was the only person in the place who thought it was, which made me both angry and a little melancholy. Outside of the fact that its “science” is a god-awful parodic stew of paleontology, geology, and epistemology, all of them wholly detached from the actual intellectual method of each of them. The most disappointing thing is that the completed museum is so dreadfully grim and earnest and boring. It even makes dragon myths servant to its fringe biblical interpretations. Who wants to live in a world where dragons are boring?

Question: Is there a specific turning point where, as a country, we moved away from prizing experience to trusting the gut over intellect?Charles P. Pierce: I don't know if there's one point that you can point to and say, “This is when it happened.” The conflict between intellectual expertise and reflexive emotion—often characterized as “good old common sense,” when it is neither common nor sense—has been endemic to American culture and politics since the beginning. I do think that my profession, journalism, went off the tracks when it accepted as axiomatic the notion that “Perception is reality.” No. Perception is perception and reality is reality, and if the former doesn't conform to the latter, then it’s the journalist's job to hammer and hammer the reality until the perception conforms to it. That's how “intelligent design” gets treated as “science” simply because a lot of people believe in it.

Question: You delve into Ignatius Donnelly’s life story. In 1880, he published the book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World in an attempt to prove that the lost city existed. Yet, you characterize Donnelly as a lovable crank, and don’t take issue with him as you do with modern eccentrics, like Rush Limbaugh. What’s the difference between a harmless crank and a crank in Idiot America?Charles P. Pierce: Cranks are noble because cranks are independent. Cranks do not care if their ideas succeed—they'd like them to do so—but cranks stand apart. Their value comes when, occasionally, their lonely dissents from the commonplace affect the culture, at which point either the culture moves to adopt them and their ideas come to influence the culture. The American crank is not someone with 600 radio stations spewing bilious canards to an audience of “dittoheads.” The concept of a “dittohead” is anathema to the American crank. He is a freethinker addressing an audience of them, whether that audience is made up of one person or a thousand. A charlatan is a crank who sells out.

Question: What is the most dangerous aspect of Idiot America?Charles P. Pierce: The most dangerous aspect of Idiot America is that it encourages us to abandon our birthright to be informed citizens of a self-governing republic. America cannot function on automatic pilot, and, too often, we don't notice that it has been until the damage has already been done.

Question: Is there a voice or leader of Idiot America?Charles P. Pierce: The leaders of Idiot America are those people who abandoned their obligations to the above. There are lots of people making an awful lot of money selling their ideas and their wares to Idiot America. Idiot America is an act of collective will, a product of lassitude and sloth.

Question: What is the difference between stupidity and glorifying ignorance? Charles P. Pierce: Stupidity is as stupidity does, to quote a uniquely stupid movie. It has been with us always and always will be. But we moved into an era in which stupidity was celebrated if it managed to sell itself well, if it succeeded, if it made people money. That is “glorifying ignorance.” We moved into an era in which the reflexive instincts of the Gut were celebrated at the expense of reasoned, informed opinion. To this day, we have a political party—the Republicans—who, because it embraced a “movement of Conservatism” that celebrated anti-intellectualism is now incapable of conducting itself in any other way. That has profound political and cultural consequences, and the truly foul part about it was that so many people engaged in it knowing full well they were peddling poison.

Question: While writing Idiot America, what story or incident made you the most incensed?Charles P. Pierce: Without question, it was talking to the people at Woodside Hospice, who shared with me what it was like to be inside the whirlwind stirred up by people who used the prolonged death of Terri Schiavo as a political and social volleyball to advance their own unpopular and reckless agenda. There are people—Sean Hannity comes to mind—who, if there is a just god in heaven, should be locked in a room for 20 minutes with Annie Santa Maria, the indomitable woman who works with the patients at the hospice. Only one of them would come out, and it wouldn't be him.

Question: With the election of President Obama, is Idiot America coming to an end? Or, will there always be a place for idiocy in America?Charles P. Pierce: Look at the political opposition to President Obama. “Socialist!” “Fascist!” “Coming to get your guns.” Hysteria from the hucksters of Idiot America is still at high-tide. People are killing other people and specifically attributing their action to imaginary oppression stoked by radio talk-show stars and television pundits. That Glenn Beck has achieved the prominence he has makes me wonder if there is a just god in heaven.

Question: Are there any positive signs that we are moving away from Idiot America? If you could create a twelve step program to America back on track, what would be your first suggestion?Charles P. Pierce: Remember that perception is not reality, that opinion, no matter how widely held, is not fact. An old and wise friend of mine said that the only question that any American citizen is required to answer is “Do you govern or are you governed?” It has to be answered in the former, and that answer has to be continuous. We have to get back to that.

(Photo © Brendan Doris Pierce, 2008)