Customer Reviews

Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free

5 star:		(77)
4 star:		(31)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(19)
1 star:		(37)

 

 

"Idiot America" is great, informative book about concepts we see everyday. Also, many of the 1-star reviews are likely biased because of some of the political and religious topics noted. I think this book is definitely a full, 5-star book.

The Following comments aren't meant to be particularly negative towards the United States and the concepts in this book aren't exclusive to the USA. The concepts in "idiot America" exist all over the entire world. "Idiot America" is a superbly covered account of something that's very prevalent in the US.

Charles Pierce provides the history of "cranks" (con artists and showmen) from the founding of the nation to current examples today in contemporary America. I focused on TV and Radio because of it's widespread impact on the populace today (even in the age of the growing Internet, which is becoming dominant). Much of TV and Talk Radio promote misinformation based on emotion, histrionics, shock, being loud, and over-the-top attempts to get ratings.


The author notes "The 3 Great Premises: and applies them to many instances in this book:

1. Any theory is valid if it moves units (rating, and making money).
2. Anything can be true if it is said loudly enough.
3. Fact is what enough people believe (the Truth is what you believe).

There are many examples in this book. Here are just a few:


The NAFTA Superhighway, that never was:

Even in the year 2003, a completely false rumor can end up being debated by Congressman, and end up on Lou Dobb's TV show. In 2003, the Texas legislature approved the the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC) to improve road and rail lines to facilitate the movement of good within the state of Texas. Due to modern day mass communication (mostly the Internet) the TTC very quickly turned into a fictitious NAFTA Superhighway. The Superhighway was to be 400 yards wide and stretch from El Paso, TX to Saskatoon, Canada. North to South, East to West. The NAFTA superhighway would be the trade corridor for the newly united states of Canada, US, and Mexico. Congressman were asked their position on the highway by reporters in DC, and many cited their opposition to it and the erosion of America's Sovereignty. Lou Dobbs ran the story on his show on a major American news network. Viewers were "outraged." Silly as this may seem, it reinforces the point that we
cannot automatically trust nor believe the mainstream media.


Intelligent Design:

Religion and politics have merged, and both use the characteristic tactics of brand marketing in the modern marketplace. Church consultant George Barna in 1988 stated that the church has failed "to embrace a marketing orientation in what has become a market-driven environment" (page 131).

After failing to sneak religion into classrooms to get Creationism taught in biology classes, in addition to nation-wide prayer in schools, a new brand was carefully and methodically invented: intelligent design. ID was funded among many, including the owner of Domino's Pizza through a right-wing legal foundation.

A school board tried to sneak ID into the Dover, Delaware school system not by Constitutionality but by marketing. The Intelligent Designers tried to remove a science textbook and replace it with one advocating Intelligent Design. The scientific basis for the ID movement was by the term "irreducible complexity." Under this, if you cannot remove one element with demolishing the system, it proves creationism works. The ID legal strategy in court under 'irreducible complexity' was, bacterial Flagellum. But the micro bacterial flagellum fell apart in court, and a judge ruled that ID was not sufficiently proven to be taught in public science classes in Delaware. Later this judge, who was given the case, was called a "fascist" by Tim O'Reilly on TV, with Pat Robertson calling him "absurd."


POLITICAL TALK RADIO:

One set of rules noted by a professor studying radio discourse:

*Never Be Dull
*Embrace willfully ignorant simplicity
*The American public is stupid; treat them that way
*Always ignore the fact and the public record when it's convenient


TELEVISION: "Television is an emotional medium. It's entertainment, not analysis or reasoned discourse."

In spite of the massive growth of those getting their information from the Internet in recent years (which I think is good if people check the source appropriately) many folks still get their information from TV.

I think TV has devolved so much and become so bad, that instead of becoming more informed on issues, people are actually becoming less informed. When I visit the US, instantly notice how bad television news is, not only on reporting the issues to the public but by its inclusion of tabloid stories. .

How many people do you know, that simply regurgitate the ideas, positions and arguments they see on radio & television? I know and witness this plenty, and yes I sometimes do it myself.


"Idiot America: How Stupidity Became Virtue in the Land of the Free," by Charles Pierce, is an excellent book.

Well, wouldja look at that. As I write this, six one-star reviews, all saying exactly the same thing and missing the point in the process -- whining about how the book focuses on conservative US politics and whining about bias, while completely failing to understand how they prove the book's point.

There are a few things that irk me about this book -- the near-exclusive focus on US conservatism is necessary to this book's theme, but the author would be well-served to look into things like the alternative medicine movement, which suffers from many of the same problems. (And would it have killed Pierce to include an index? I've said this in other reviews -- political books need indexes because without them it makes them look like they're trying to railroad the reader.) But to someone willing to take the time to read it, this book tells people what practically everyone should know about American politics -- that the American people are being sold a sob story about how experts are an elite that is keeping them from being The Best Damn Nation In The World. (In that regard, one should definitely read "The Paranoid Style In American Politics" by Richard Hofstadter -- it's over four decades old, but saw from the very beginning what has come into full bloom now with the barking lunacy of the American Right.)

Pierce covers much territory -- he starts with the Creation Museum in Kentucky, then moves on into the 19th century crank Ignatius Donnelly and his popularization of Atlantis, and from there it's off to the races. The most painfully harrowing sections are those dealing with the Kitzmiller trial in Dover, PA, where a town drew up sides over good science vs. bad religion, and the Terri Schiavo controversy, where a mourning family allowed themselves to be taken advantage of by a large movement of religious fanatics so thoroughly divorced from reality that they managed to get Congress to subpoena the testimony of a brain-dead woman. The appalling and almost nihilistic arrogance of global-warming deniers rates a chapter as well, and the book even shows a surprise hero -- James Madison, a mediocre president but a genius legislator whose quiet determination was one of the main driving forces behind the writing of the Constitution. Pierce brings the snark throughout, not holding back with frustration and often-brutal humor, showing at every turn how the people he writes about confuse research for indoctrination and dissent for political bias.

The main problem with this book is this: the people who are likely to read it already know most of the story, and are mostly getting background information, and the people who won't read it are like the six reviewers I mentioned in my intro -- determined to ignore its stories and insights as "bias" because their politics and faith won't let them look outside the cloister. The main value of this book, then, is to people on the fence, people in the center who are willing to learn where people get in over their heads and who are willing to admit that what they think they know may not be so.

Charles Pierce has long been a target of the same conservative spammers and sockpuppets that make reading the comments sections of most blogs and news websites such a display of witlessess. These same persons are on a drive to wreck sales for his book by downrating it even though they have never read it and never will.

The reason for their enmity is obvious: Much as the late David Postman did with his book Amused to Death, Mr. Pierce draws accurate and deadly aim at the forces that have led to the devaluing of intelligence and learning in America. The main difference is that while Postman didn't explicitly ascribe an ideological cause or specific ideological actors for this general dumbing-down, Pierce does. He lays the blame at the feet of various ideology-driven entities, with special attention given to the same corporate-media war cheerleaders who happily passed on Bush's lies about Iraqi weaponry to a somnolent public, and who, in the name of putting "balance" over reality, treat specious creationist nonsense and hard scientific fact as if both had equal validity. Highly recommended!

Pastor Ray Mummert, very early in Pierce's book, sums up most of the one-star reviews of "Idiot America". He's quoted as saying, "We've been attacked by the educated, intelligent segment of the culture". Rather than trying to learn from those Mummert recognizes as intelligent and educated, one-star reviewers mostly seem to be proud that they can't or won't learn from them, that they're quite satisfied to be unaware idiots. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote 50 years ago: "The trouble with dumb bastards is that they're too dumb to realize there's such a thing as smart."

Our country was founded during the Age of Enlightenment by the likes of James Madison, to whom Pierce pays repeated attention. He discusses events and issues that show clearly how the Enlightment's premise, that democratic self-government requires an educated citizenry, no longer holds sway in America. Pierce demonstrates how scorn for expertise, intelligence and education has led to recent myths such as the Dover, PA court case over "intelligent design", the lies about weapons of mass destruction, and Terri Schiavo's ability to recover from her vegetative state.

Pierce lays out three great premises that have overtaken respect for facts and truth. Those are listed in other reviews; I won't repeat them. Where the book falls short, in my opinion, is in offering a prescription for how the "intelligent and educated segment" may reach out effectively to the "other America" to restore a more universal respect for actual facts and how to determine whether a proposition is true. But Pierce is certainly provocative. Perhaps those younger and wiser than I, e.g., Rachel Maddow or Jon Stewart, will hear him and bring forth the imagination, drive and reasonableness to counter America's descent into idiocy. Otherwise, the future looks frightening, and the Age of Enlightenment is truly history.

Make no mistake about it. "Idiot America" is really going to irk some people, and irk them very badly. Charles Pierce leaves no "right winger" behind in his polemic about how stupidity is reigning and raining hard in America, mostly due to the foible of rabid conservative thought.

Covering topics as varied as crank author Ignatius Donnelly's "fictional" non-fiction book on Atlantis that made him an author celebrity, to Oklahoma senator James Inhofe, who claims that global warming is a "hoax". Pierce's narrative bounces all over the place, from topic to topic, skewering right wingers with every slash of his lexigraphic sword, often to funny results. His case: America has become the land of idiocy, where senators diagnose patients over a television set, radio buffoons suggest that autism is caused by bad parenting, and evolution should be banished from the schools.

He builds his case with three interesting premises:

1) Any theory is valid if it sells books, soak up ratings, or otherwise move units. (Ann Coulter, right)
2) Anything can be true if someone says it loud enough. (Hello Rush!)
3) Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it. (Right wing, helllooo?)

Thus, what Pierce calls "the Gut", people just know something is right and wrong, because their "gut" tells them. Unfortunately, as Pierce explores through this book, people are experiencing serious gastronomical issues; more aptly, the right wing of this country needs to seriously look at taking a colonic, for what they actually perpetuate and pander to is absurd, if not laughable.

Pierce starts each chapter with an scene or two from the life of President James Madison, funnily labeled "the Charlie Brown of the Founding Fathers", whose words illuminate the concept that Pierce explores. One of the most powerful chapters comes in his journey through the world of Terri Schiavo's hospice experience. Pierce speaks with the people most effected by Terri (not the Congress passing legislation, which Bush "interrupted" one of his many vacations to sign), the brave souls who worked at the hospice and endured the brunt of hostilities when the media besieged the location. Another powerful chapter centers on the "Intelligent Design" battle in Dover, Pennsylvania and the Republican judged irked at the people trying to inject national politics into their little hamlet.

"Idiot America" works to expose cranks in our society, in order to restore something that we once had in the United States, but increasingly, is disappearing, which is the ability to engage in thoughtful, meaningful dialogue. When one side puts up such a wall of idiocy, blares it loudly without listening, dialogue, honest debate simply cannot happen.

This book is not for everyone. Those on the right of issues in this country won't find any of the exposed hypocrisy remotely believable or interesting. Those on the left, and the center, would do well to read this book, and learn from Pierce's brilliant damning look at those who declare war on America's intelligent people.

There are several excellent observations running around in Idiot America. In particular, the Three Great Premises of Idiot America are an excellent and concise way to refer to the underlying process that legitimizes stupidity in America today. Idiot America is worth reading.

Unfortunately, Idiot America is not without flaws. At several points in the book Pierce discusses what the book "was going to be," and it is mentioned that the book arises from several different pieces of work that Pierce has produced over the years. The organization and flow of the book back those claims up to the hilt: we are presented with a pastiche of ideas and points in history that are not sufficiently stitched together to make a compelling extended argument.

The ideas of Idiot America hold great promise but, like many of the complicated ideas discusses in the book, they simply aren't communicated well enough. The editor of the work should have told Pierce to pick his hypotheses (the Gut, the Premises, crank versus idiot) and state those hypotheses clearly and organize the book around them, using his evidence and research to support his ideas.

Idiot America reads as if Pierce took a bunch of blogs and articles and threw them together, adding Madison musings at random intervals.

Read it, but don't expect too much more than what you can glean from reading the synopses that some have included in their reviews.

A truly vital contribution to the history of anti-intellectualism in American. Charlie Pierce is not afraid to a call a Hannity a Hannity or an idiot an idiot. Pierce has successfully isolated The Three Great Premises of Idiot America: 1. Any theory is valid if it moves product or units; 2. Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough; 3. Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it.
From the Creation Museum, to the Dover Intelligent Design Case, to the tragedy of Terri Schiavo, to the canonization of St. Jack Bauer, Pierce has traced the transformation from the traditional American crank to the modern American idiot. This is a book to be savored and enjoyed. Bravo!

I have been referring to those who tune into the likes of Bill O'Reilly and other right wing talk show hosts as requiring "vicarious guts." They don't have the guts to express their opinions; if they do so, someone smarter will refute everything they say. So they rely on the "hosts"--the audacity of the opinion of whom they think is tantamount to substance--to "feel" their opinions for them. Pierce comes to similar conclusions in this fine book.

Pierce started the book with some comments on the Creation Museum, where you see dinosaurs with saddles. You see, the creationist advocates argue that we humans coexisted with the dinos because, well, that's what it (ostensibly) says in the bible. But Pierce asserts that theories such as evolution aren't subject to democracy. He then brings up "founding father" James Madison. Peirce didn't seem obsessed with Madison. He suggested that Madison may have been a mediocre president, but Madison did insist upon reason, something not a trait of Idiot America.

Pierce then proceeds to discussion of an American "crank," Ignatius Donnelly. Peirce says that such cranks are as American as apple pie. What's important is that they're not in positions of real influence. When they are, we're in trouble.

Pierce suggests that there are three "Great Premises":

1) Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings or otherwise moves units;
2) Anything can be true if someone says it loud enough;
3) Fact is that which enough people believe; truth is determined by how fervently they believe it.

The "Gut" (with a capital "G") comes up repeatedly: the trait of Idiot America, opposed to thought process, or evidence.

He has a chapter entitled "The War on Expertise" which I noted here in the reviews just today in which someone commented on the "expertise and elitism" of someone, as if those traits were something to be shunned. He then covers certain conspiracy theories, none of them verified, particularly that of the Masons being responsible for everything short of the Kennedy assassination. (I can relate to the Mason theories because my father in law was awaiting the end of the world before 2000, and the books he was reading blamed the woes of the earth on the Communists and the Masons!)

While my interest in the book started on a low note, it increased with each chapter. One chapter on talk radio--the bulk of which is "conservative"--covered conspiracies, and the low intellectual and/or moral caliber of many of the "hosts." (See above, and the Premises.) The next chapter addressed the issue of the legal suit in Delaware in which a conservative Bush appointee just a few years ago delivered a verdict that the "intelligent design" business was, in essence, a religiously based ideology, not a secular one. What interested me is that Pierce had spend some time with Judge Jones, who'd been threatened by some who disagreed with his verdict! See again: the Premises. The verdict was based on fact, and on law (and on the perjury of many of the pro ID witnesses). It wasn't based on "this many people believe in it, therefore it's justified."

When the Terry Schiavo business was taking place a few years ago, I didn't pay all that much attention to it. But from the chapter in this book I learned much! For example, those who suggested that Schiavo was a potential survivor were, to put it diplomatically, ill-informed. They clearly had political motives, and Schiavo's husband, who'd been in favor of their "pulling the plug," had to spend a great deal of time and energy because of the fervor of the opinions of those who hadn't a clue what they were talking about, and who responded to gossip and rumors! (And Schiavo herself was the ultimate victim, despite the "Gut" of those who claimed to defend her!)

The next chapter was on an important subject: global warming. All the data on the subject can be pretty dry, whether you believe it or not. But Pierce puts it into the context of some Alaskans, particularly one Inupiaq community and how they're condemned by it. He convicts the climate change deniers of using the techniques mastered by the PR masterminds of the tobacco controversy: plant just a little uncertainty to foster doubt. But Pierce is obviously convinced of the predominance of scientific fact, not the PR hype of those whose ideologies deny the concepts of global warming.

All in all, the book was both factual and witty. There were places where I laughed aloud while reading some sections of the book to others. Again, Pierce brings up many an American crank, but some of them, e.g., Justice Scalia in the Supreme Court, who quoted the television series "24" ("the first attempt at successful mass marketing torture porn") as if it were something real, not an inane fiction series. He justly says, then, that Scalia isn't a crank, but a representative of Idiot America.

Some have criticized Pierce for having a bias against the "right wing." But, if you actually read the book, his examples are all from the right wing! (There are nowhere near as many outside of the right who represent Idiot America as in the right wing!) In addition, he finds Obama to be another symptom of Idiot America!

Read this gem. You may wonder why the country is as divided as it is today, for example. This volume offers some pretty good diagnoses of what's happening to us, as victims of Idiot America.

When did the crank with the bullhorn shouting at the corner become the worldly sage, and when did our guts and feelings start making decisions for our brains? Charles Pierce tackles questions that I have been struggling with for a while now: when did belief become fact and passion and desire supplant truth? Pierce's book helps provide some of the answers.

I understand why some people think Pierce has a liberal bias, but to use that to completely invalidate his argument is, well, idiotic. That said, Idiot America isn't for everyone. If you are the type of person who writes "authoritative" one-sentence reviews of a book you haven't read, Idiot America isn't for you. If you do all your thinking with your gut, this book isn't for you. If you believe that believing something deeply is all it takes to make it true, this book really isn't for you. But for the rest of us who watch the television pundits and shudder, who are tired of seeing "facts" confused with truth and respect conferred on opinions unsupported by evidence, well, this book is for us.

I just finished reading the book. It's absolutely wonderful!

Pierce uses razor-sharp wit and an historian's perspective to look at America's fascination with absurdity. The book strings together several of our most blatantly idiotic accomplishments to identify and explore the themes that make the embracing of stupidity ever-more acceptable in our culture.

Some of Pierce's incisive, witty accounts of our nation's more notable flings with idiocy will make you shake your head, some will make you want to scream, and some will motivate you to go to the polls, or better yet, run for office. (But first, it'll make you say to yourself, "Damn, I wish I could make verbs and nouns dance together that well.")

This is a great read.

I note that several of the "1-star" reviews of the book are from people decrying it as a "liberal" attack on conservatives. Well, that's Idiot America for you.

Or as Pastor Mummert is quoted as saying in Chapter 1, "We're under attack from the intelligent, educated segment of our culture!"