I think I went in expecting a lot more as I love him as a guest on NPR's Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me. The book is a good read, filled with interesting information about James Madison thrown in with all the ways that our country is sort of floundering at the moment. Unfortunately, while it had a wariness about it, there was little humor to soften the truth of this book.

Plus, fair or not, I tend to judge books by how much/little I want to put it down. And this book wasn't one I hurried off to read.

Still not terrible. One I'd probably say to get from the library rather than purchase. ( )

This is a very rant-y book, and while I agree with the author that people are dumb, reading this book is a lot like listening to a cranky old guy out on his front porch lamenting how back in his day people were smart, and if only those damn kids would turn down the music and get off his lawn things would be a lot better.

Sure, people are sold a lot of stupid ideas, but the author doesn't really talk about why. Nor does he offer any sort of solution to country-wide idiocy. He also see...more This is a very rant-y book, and while I agree with the author that people are dumb, reading this book is a lot like listening to a cranky old guy out on his front porch lamenting how back in his day people were smart, and if only those damn kids would turn down the music and get off his lawn things would be a lot better.

Sure, people are sold a lot of stupid ideas, but the author doesn't really talk about why. Nor does he offer any sort of solution to country-wide idiocy. He also seems to think there were no idiots a long time ago, or if there were it was OK because there was no TV. ( )

Charles Pierce is a great admirer of the American tradition of cranks: people with wild and wacky theories that challenge the status quo, whose notions are tested against reality and are either break current understanding or are broken by it. (For example, my mother grew up in an era when tectonic drift was a crank theory; it is now accepted geology.) He sees this as one of the beauties of a society with the First Amendment in its bedrock.

In recent years, however, crank theories are getting spread throughout the media without benefit of testing them against reality, and without the benefit of testing they amount to so much idiocy. Instead, they are swept up by what he identifies as three Great Premises of Idiot America:

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 loudly enough.


3. Fact is that which people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it.

He documents much idiocy of recent years and compares it to historical crankery (Ignatius Donnelly’s Atlantis: the Antediluvian World being a prominent example). Pierce doesn’t have a structural solution to the problem; he calls for a return to the days when cranks were a beloved fringe element of our society rather than mass-marketed lunatics on television, propped up by anyone whose political agenda they serve, but doesn’t chart a course to get there. ( )

Loved this book, perhaps because it plays to all my prejudices, but trying to be objective, I think Pierce does hit upon trends in modern society that are very worrisome. He posits three basic maxims: (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 loudly enough; (3) Fact is that which enough people believe; truth is determined by how fervently they believe it. Try applying these maxims against any number of modern trends or events and see how accurately they apply.

Pierce is a journalist and he has been writing along these lines for some time, but the tipping point for him was a visit to the creationist “museum” (the mere concept boggles the mind), where he saw a dinosaur with a saddle on it, because if humans and dinosaurs co-existed, well we could assume that the former had domesticated the latter….this is ignorance on such a scale that it would require a backhoe to shovel it. Of course, that’s my opinion and isn’t anyone entitled to a contrary one? Well, no. Some questions can be legitimately debated, e.g. is there a God, is there life after death, are we here for some divine purpose or did we simply win the biological sweepstakes? But other questions, e.g. evolution, gravity, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, relativity…all of these has been shown to be correct time and time again through rigorous scientific testing, and to deny them is not exercising some right to differ, it is demonstrating appalling ignorance. And, I’m sorry, but believing deeply does not overturn the scientific applecart. As Pierce puts it, the modern trend has come to this:

“If something feels right, it must be treated with the same respect given something that actually is right. If something is felt deeply, it must carry the same weight as something that is true. If there are two sides to every argument---or, more to the point, if there are people willing to take up two sides to every argument---they both must be right, or, at least, equally valid.” Um….no. This way lies madness, or at least considerable stupidity.

Pierce notes that “the founders wanted a nation of educated people: this, they believed, was essential to self-government,”, but he despairs with the directions he sees, for instance with talk radio: “….that was the driving force in changing American debate into American argument. It moved discussions southward from the brain to the Gut. Debate no longer consists of thesis and antithesis, moving forward to synthesis; it is now a matter of choosing up sides, finding someone on your team to sally forth, and the laying the wood to each other in between commercials for male-enhancement products.”

Pierce pulls no punches and refers to “three intermingled schools of idiocy” that have come to characterize modern society: political idiocy, “best represented on the AM radio dial and on those evening cable television news programs”, commercial idiocy as “the mechanism through which political idiocy (among other things) thrives”, and religious idiocy, “formidable on its own, also functions as a baptismal font for political and commercial idiocy. Gussy up your extremist politics, or your bunco museum in which dinosaurs wear saddles, with the Gospels, and you can paint anyone who suggests that your goods are ridiculous a member of the intelligent, educated segment of the population, come to discomfit the faith-based folks”.

Pierce will offend people who buy into these nostrums, who are taken in by the three maxims and who think this is right, this is the way things should be, but he has a serious argument and serious observations that deserve the sort of scrutiny and debate that is, alas, now all too infrequent.

The last word: “If the country took its obligations to self-government at all seriously, the presence of Sarah Palin on a national ticket would have been an insult on a par with the elevation of Caligula’s horse.”

Great stuff.

While reading Idiot America , I was reminded of the GreenDay song, 'American Idiot.' Not becuase the titles are eerily similar, but becuase the messages behind the song and book are eerily similar. In the song, GreenDay discusses the media in America and how it's become more propaganda than media. In the book, Pierce shows readers how right-wing radio has brainwashed a generation to believe that being intellectual equals elitism, which equals liberal and evil. Another common message between the book and the song is the 'plan' to invade Iraq and how we were duped by it.

Charles Pierce introduces us to Idiot America as we visit a family entering the 'Creation Museum.' As the book closes, readers watch the family leaving the museum. The use of this literary device makes the book come full-circle. I highly recommend Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free for those who want to know why is America so backwards. ( )