Idiot America...

[Bigmack]

by Charles Peirce...

Can't recommend it enough. His thesis is that the US has always had "cranks"... people who had whacky ideas and made social or political movements out of them... but the media and the vacuous population the media helped create have brought the "cranks" into the political mainstream.

Lots of historical background and a pleasant and humorous writing style makes it an easy read.

Check it out.

http://www.amazon.com/Idiot-America-Stupidity-Became-Virtue/dp/0767926145/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249933406&sr=1-1

edited to add link

[pinto]

1. Hi Bigmack. Folks will want a link to the article.

Thanks. :hi:

[Hello_Kitty]

4. It's a book.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0767926145/?tag=mh0b-20&hvadid=65389457&ref=pd_sl_51qq5zo4gy_e

[MountainLaurel]

2. Terrific book

I second Bigmack's review.

[silverweb]

3. It's a book.

http://www.amazon.com/Idiot-America-Stupidity-Became-Virtue/dp/0767926145

[timeforpeace]

5. It's a terrific book.

[david13]

6. I got to read this book. I'll order it from the library now.

No cost that way. I have long been impressed by the stupidity of americans but it also tends to be a common human condition, so it is not just americans. But. Americans have elevated it to a high and fine art, and emphasized the desirability of it. Made it the common american vogue, as it were.
Richard Hofstader pointed it out in Anti Intellectualism in American Life. I remember Adlai Stevenson being criticized as being an egghead, a thinker, intelligent, and possibly worse, worse, a college professor.
I think it explains why bush, the younger, always tried to foist himself off as an idiot or a chimpanzee.
I know he is stupid, but not that stupid, he was putting on a bit of an act.
Smoking cigarettes. To me one of the stupidest things any human could do, short of licking the toilet, sniffing Raid Ant & Roach Killer in a brown paper bag, or sucking on the exhaust pipe of a car running it's engine.
Yet there are legions out there doing it at this moment, and many others who put forth the proposition that it is a necessary, wonderful, and delightful thing to do.
And of all the problems earth faces, everyone ignores the most important, to worship babies, that of ... overpopulation. "Oh, I'm concerned about overpopulation, but ... I just love a little baby!"
??
dc

[MrScorpio]

7. In America, people have a right to be a complete idiot....

That's the gist of PJ O'Rourke's defense of smoking

[Aviation Pro]

9. Show me in the Constitution where people have the right to be an idiot....

...and if it's in there it gets trumped by the "general welfare" clause in the preamble.

[MrScorpio]

10. Whenever did wingers like O'Rourke ever try to adhere to the Constitution?

Good luck in trying to get them to follow it

[el_bryanto]

8. It's the fault of Democracy

Democracy leads to the elevation of stupidity.

Right?

Bryant

[MountainLaurel]

11. Another good one

That's a bit more academic in nature is Susan Jacoby's "The Age of American Unreason," which pretty much picks up where Hofstadter left off.