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

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Book Description
The 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. Pierce

Question: 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)

From Publishers Weekly

Journalist Pierce delivers a rapier-sharp rant on how the America of Franklin and Edison, Fulton and Ford has devolved into America the Uninformed, where citizens hostile to science are exchanging fact for fiction, and faith for reason, and glutting themselves on reality TV and conspiracy theories. Pierce makes no apologies for his liberal bias, and some conservatives—notably evolution opponents and Rush Limbaugh—endure a good deal of bashing. Pierce writes that in the U.S., Fact is merely what enough people believe, and truth lies only in how fervently they believe it. He supports his thesis with references to James Madison and other founding fathers, who may have foreseen and rued the emergence of cranks who would threaten the Enlightenment-based nation they were shaping. Although the book is not likely to win any converts from the right wing Pierce so energetically decries, it is an engaging catalogue of those unscientifically verified truths that enthrall and impassion millions of Americans. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday (June 2, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767926145
• ISBN-13: 978-0767926140
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (84 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,887 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

198 of 206 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's True: We See This Everyday, July 2, 2009

By	K. Johnson (US/Asia) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

"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.

201 of 214 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A must read, but the people who should won't, June 19, 2009

By	Brian Connors (Cape Cod, MA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

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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.

172 of 186 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars RWers who haven't read this book are gaming the system, June 11, 2009

By	Phoenix Woman - See all my reviews

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!