Widespread ignorance bordering on idiocy is our new national goal.

[G_j]

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2012/03/20/age-of-ignorance/

Age Of Ignorance
Charles Simic

Widespread ignorance bordering on idiocy is our new national goal. It’s no use pretending otherwise and telling us, as Thomas Friedman did in the Times a few days ago, that educated people are the nation’s most valuable resources. Sure, they are, but do we still want them? It doesn’t look to me as if we do. The ideal citizen of a politically corrupt state, such as the one we now have, is a gullible dolt unable to tell truth from bullshit.

An educated, well-informed population, the kind that a functioning democracy requires, would be difficult to lie to, and could not be led by the nose by the various vested interests running amok in this country. Most of our politicians and their political advisers and lobbyists would find themselves unemployed, and so would the gasbags who pass themselves off as our opinion makers. Luckily for them, nothing so catastrophic, even though perfectly well-deserved and widely-welcome, has a remote chance of occurring any time soon. For starters, there’s more money to be made from the ignorant than the enlightened, and deceiving Americans is one of the few growing home industries we still have in this country. A truly educated populace would be bad, both for politicians and for business.

It took years of indifference and stupidity to make us as ignorant as we are today. Anyone who has taught college over the last forty years, as I have, can tell you how much less students coming out of high school know every year. At first it was shocking, but it no longer surprises any college instructor that the nice and eager young people enrolled in your classes have no ability to grasp most of the material being taught. Teaching American literature, as I have been doing, has become harder and harder in recent years, since the students read little literature before coming to college and often lack the most basic historical information about the period in which the novel or the poem was written, including what important ideas and issues occupied thinking people at the time

...more...

Fairgoers cheer for Sarah Palin while she appears on the Sean Hannity Show at the Iowa State Fair, August 12, 2011

[HassleCat]

1. Good to see we can still set goals and achieve them! (eom)

[pampango]

2. "there’s another more pernicious kind of ignorance we confront today. It is the product of years of

ideological and political polarization and the deliberate effort by the most fanatical and intolerant parties in that conflict to manufacture more ignorance by lying about many aspects of our history and even our recent past. I recall being stunned some years back when I read that a majority of Americans told pollsters that Saddam Hussein was behind September 11 terrorist attacks. It struck me as a propaganda feat unsurpassed by the worst authoritarian regimes of the past—many of which had to resort to labor camps and firing squads to force their people to believe some untruth, without comparable success.

In the past, if someone knew nothing and talked nonsense, no one paid any attention to him. No more. Now such people are courted and flattered by conservative politicians and ideologues as “Real Americans” defending their country against big government and educated liberal elites. The press interviews them and reports their opinions seriously without pointing out the imbecility of what they believe. The hucksters, who manipulate them for the powerful financial interests, know that they can be made to believe anything, because, to the ignorant and the bigoted, lies always sound better than truth ...

“Stupidity is sometimes the greatest of historical forces,” Sidney Hook said once. No doubt. What we have in this country is the rebellion of dull minds against the intellect. That’s why they love politicians who rail against teachers indoctrinating children against their parents’ values and resent the ones who show ability to think seriously and independently. Despite their bravado, these fools can always be counted on to vote against their self-interest. And that, as far as I’m concerned, is why millions are being spent to keep my fellow citizens ignorant.

RW populists in particular seem to fall victim to this. People who "know nothing" and "talk nonsense" are held up by the right as "real Americans" defending common people from the liberal elite.

Nice find, G_j. Thanks for posting it.

[G_j]

3. my pleasure, a nice little insight,

"Despite their bravado, these fools can always be counted on to vote against their self-interest. And that, as far as I’m concerned, is why millions are being spent to keep my fellow citizens ignorant."

[hifiguy]

8. Richard Hofstadter was pointing out this tendency

decades ago in his famous essay "Anti-Intellectulism in American Politics."

Americans have for going on 200 years feared, resented and disliked education and the educated.

[hifiguy]

5. The ignorance and stupidity we see in the masses,

who have never been that bright (let's face that fact, but they didn't used to be this dumb) are the fruits of a deliberate 35-40 year dumbing down of the populace via corporate propaganda, the subversion of news outlets by the masters of that propaganda and, of course, religion, the all time champ at creating mindless and unquestioning sheeple.

It's by design, not accidental.

[Ligyron]

6. Good read and well stated! eom

[Orrex]

7. On what basis might we conclude that it has ever been otherwise?

[sinkingfeeling]

9. As the author stated, any college instructor who has

taught 40 years or so has experienced this. I was shocked when I taught a class in 2004 and all failed it. Same class I had taught just a decade before with 100% pass rate.

[Orrex]

12. What was the class, out of curiosity?

[sinkingfeeling]

13. Mainframe computer internal operations.

[Orrex]

15. In that case, I got nothing.

[Blue_Tires]

10. One of the legacies of the Bush years, sadly

[Skittles]

11. Reagan made greed and idiocy fashionable

his legacy continues

[hobbit709]

14. Idiocracy is actually a documentary.

[lapislzi]

16. Let's call it the "Barnumization" of America

Old Phineas T would be proud. There's not one being born every minute; there's thousands.