Idiot America - A new book by Charlie Pierce

[GoneOffShore]

Back in 2005, Charlie Pierce started a journey around the US looking for signs of anti-intellectualism. He found them. And more than he bargained for.

His initial article in Esquire has now been expanded into a book which will be published on June 2nd.

I found the following one of the most telling quotes, one that accounts for Creationism, conspiracy theories and the anti science agenda of many on both the right and the left:

... the ascendancy of the notion that the people whom we should trust the least are the people who best know what they're talking about. In the new media age, everybody is a historian, or a preacher, or a scientist, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert.

In the place of expertise, we have elevated the Gut, and the Gut is a moron, as anyone who has ever tossed a golf club, punched a wall, or kicked an errant lawn mower knows. We occasionally dress up the Gut by calling it "common sense." The president's former advisor on medical ethics regularly refers to the "yuck factor." The Gut is common. It is democratic. It is the roiling repository of dark and ancient fears. Worst of all, the Gut is faith-based.
<snip>
The Gut is the basis for the Great Premises of Idiot America. We hold these truths to be self-evident:
1) Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units.
2) Anything can be true if somebody says it on television.
3) Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it.

[Echo In Light]

1. Quote:

"The rise of Idiot America is essentially a war on expertise. It's not so much antimodernism or the distrust of intellectual elites that Richard Hofstadter deftly teased out of the national DNA forty years ago. Both of those things are part of it. However, the rise of Idiot America today represents -- for profit mainly, but also, and more cynically, for political advantage and in the pursuit of power -- the breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good."

[GoneOffShore]

2. Indeed. I've seen this time and time again.

Unfortunately, I see it increasingly here on DU.

[SteppingRazor]

3. Recommended. I recall reading that story a couple years back. It left an impression.

I'll have to get the book. Unfortunately, I think this has gotten worse in the intervening years, not better. It's symptomatic of blogging, and discussion forums like DU, especially. No one knows who anyone else is, and therefore, no one is ready to accede that others may be more knowledgeable on any given subject. It's somewhat understandable in a mostly anonymous venue such as this. But the really frightening part is when accepted experts on a subject are dismissed out of hand, or when pseudo-experts are elevated to their level simply through the approbation of one political side or another.

[GoneOffShore]

5. That one of the reasons I posted it.

I found a reference to the article over at Science Blogs. I find myself following discussions there because the tolerance for woo woo is very low.

[GoneOffShore]

4. Fact is that which enough people believe.

Whoever hit the rec button, thanks.

[distantearlywarning]

6. You see this sort of thing on DU all the time, sadly.

"I don't care what the studies say, it works for me and that's all that matters!"

"College just makes people more stupid"

[GoneOffShore]

7. That's one of the reasons I posted it. Unfortunately

it won't be read by those who it would help the most. Or discounted because it challenges their "Gut Feeling" or "Faith".

[JitterbugPerfume]

8. as I read this post

my TV is tuned to a 24hr news channel

I can't take it anymore .

[Tracer]

9. Well, Charlie oughta know about idiots.

I worked at the same place as him.

One night, he asked me for a ride home. It was way out of my way and I said no.

He kept on and on about the ride, and I finally gave in and drove him to his house.

Instead of thanking me for the ride and getting out of the car, he grabbed me and started mauling me (yuck!). After some pushing and shoving, he got the message and left.

As an aside, the cruel people at that workplace called his girlfriend (later wife) "Sasquatch"

-----

Just some gossip from the past.

[GoneOffShore]

10. Does this have ANY bearing on the essay or the premise?

:shrug:

[JonathanMeador]

11. Death to the Gut

However, we are the fattest people on the plane, so hasn't the emphasis on gut-level thinking reflected an increase in our collective waistlines? OR DID I JUST BLOW YOUR MIND?!?!?!?!

[valerief]

13. LOL!

:rofl:

[Arugula Latte]

12. Part of the problem is the ridiculous legitimacy given to the notion of "Faith"

Any nonsense is supposed to suddenly become sacrosanct if it's slapped with the label "Faith." I have no respect for "Faith," which is, as Mark Twain put it, "believing something you know ain't so." Facts deserve respect. Superstition and mythology espoused as truth do not deserve respect.

[JitterbugPerfume]

14. and the abiliy to tell the difference!

[Echo In Light]

15. I haven't a problem with 'faith,' but do with those who have used it as a means of social control

[GoneOffShore]

17. I have an enormous problem with "Faith" mainly because it is always used as a means of control

Whether by fundamentalist religious folks or those who indulge in other sorts of spiritualism or anti science woowoo.

"Here eat these vegetables - I have faith that they're going to cure your cancer."

[Juche]

16. What works to change it

You can't have a functioning democracy like this, citizens just end up becoming focus groups rather than participants.

Would mandatory classes in rhetoric, interpersonal communication and critical thinking in grade school make a difference?

Do people believe in delusions because they don't have the tools to be introspective enough to correct for the deslusions, or because they find them more comfortable than the truth? I think with ID vs. natural selection it is the latter. For many people it is more comforting to believe in a benign, interactive creator than natural selection and all that that entails. Denial when confronted with an uncomfortable truth is a part of the human race, and I don't think that can ever be purged.

[GoneOffShore]

18. I figured that this would fall off fairly soon - Because no one really wants to address it.

Oh well - :shrug:

[leftstreet]

20. Some of us don't consider our fellow citizens 'idiots'

The corporate M$M run psy-opy bullshit little BREAKING NEWS stories, then a few pundits dominate the screens and the airwaves 'debating' it in yet a new psy-opy way, then some corporate think tank runs a few polls.

Once they have the results they want, they wave it in front of us and say "SEE? Your neighbors are all idiots!"

Most people I know DO know what's really important.

[GoneOffShore]

22. Did you read the essay?

Or the other replies?

When you do, come back to me about whether or not there is a huge level of idiocy in this country. When "Creationism" and other bullshit of that ilk can get equal time on TV with science, in the interest of "balance, instead of getting laughed out of the marketplace of ideas, I think that we're verging on the seriously stupid as a society.

[leftstreet]

25. But We the People don't decide what gets put on teevee

You just said it yourself - "can get equal time"

Nobody watches this shit.

There's no incentive for increasing viewership when there's no competition among the handful of corporations that own the media.

It's all propaganda.

[GoneOffShore]

26. Are you saying that Pierce's assessment is wrong?

I understand that we theoretically "don't have a say", except that we do. The more people who call out bullshit and demand better media will get it.

And great masses of people "watch this shit" as evidenced by the presence of Freeperville and numerous anti-science and anti-intellectual posts on this board.

[Hannah Bell]

19. yet another book by some supposed arbiter telling us ordinary americans are stupid.

the ownership class likes this storyline.

[GoneOffShore]

23. So you're down with people putting up with nonsense like this:

...The kids run past that and around a corner, where stands another, smaller dinosaur.

Which is wearing a saddle.

It is an English saddle, hornless and battered. Apparently, this was a dinosaur used for dressage competitions and stakes races. Any working dinosaur accustomed to the rigors of ranch work and herding other dinosaurs along the dusty trail almost certainly would wear a sturdy western saddle.

This is very much a show dinosaur.

The dinosaurs are the first things you see when you enter the Creation Museum, which is very much a work in progress and the dream child of an Australian named Ken Ham. Ham is the founder of Answers in Genesis, an organization of which the museum one day will be the headquarters. The people here today are on a special tour. They have paid $149 to become "charter members" of the museum.

And not calling bullshit on it???

And by the way, he's an observer, a journalist: something that we've gotten less used to in this country.

[BeHereNow]

21. Has the author been reading DU?

One might come to that conclusion after the last year of idiot threads.
BHN

[GoneOffShore]

24. He wrote the original article in 2005.

The year of Terry Schiavo, AIDS from tears, the "yuck factor" and other gems. Maybe he hung out here during the primaries to get material for the book.