Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free
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.WithIdiot 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 writeIdiot  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 theNew York Timesabout the Creation Museum, I pitched an idea to Mark Warren, my editor atEsquire,  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 writingIdiot 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 bookAtlantis: The Antediluvian  Worldin 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  inIdiot 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 writingIdiot 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)--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.