Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free
The culture wars are over and the idiots have won. This is a veteran journalist's caustically funny, righteously angry lament about the glorification of ignorance in the United States. The three Great Premises of Idiot America: * Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or...
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The culture wars are over and the idiots have won. This is a veteran journalist's caustically funny, righteously angry lament about the glorification of ignorance in the United States. The three Great Premises of Idiot America: * Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units. * Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough. * Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it. Charles Pierce has led a career-long quest to separate the smart from the pap, and now it's 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 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.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9780767926140 (0767926145)
Publish date: June 2nd 2009
Publisher: Doubleday
Pages no: 293
Edition language: English
This was a quick and interesting read. It was well written and well argued. It would have been better if it were more thoroughly evidenced, and hopefully the next edition will include the anti-GMO and the anti-vaccine movement on the left to demonstrate that the issues he brings up are not strictly ...
Got the message. No need to repeat it. Agreed on all points. Simply not entertained enough to continue. Dnf at 19% (kindle edition).
I've had this on my shelves for a while, but hadn't picked it up as I suspected it was more a rant than anything else. That turns out NOT to be the case. The central thesis is that how the marketplace of ideas in the US operates has fundamentally changed - and largely to the detriment of both mainst...
About halfway through this book, I thought "This is the kind of book that will never be read by the people most in need of its content."Why? Because journalist Charles Pierce is skewering America's anti-intellectuals with flawless research, brilliant examples -- and their won words. For example, w...
This book wasn't quite what I had expected. I thought I was getting a collection of biting and humorous essays on the nuttier aspects of the political and cultural right, like an Al Franken. Instead Idiot America is more of a history lesson, with forays into the fringe elements connected with 8 year...
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