Fantastic Essay about Idiot America

[liz_marcs]

jblaque has reposted fantastic 2005 essay by Charles P Pierce that was published in Esquire about science vs. religion, intellect vs. gut, enlightenment vs. deliberate ignorance, and the loss of the American Dream to Idiot America called Battle for the Planet of the Apes.

Fantastically long, but oh-so-worth-the-read, if only for the insightful punchline at

Comments

[m_mcgregor]

I think perhaps the Larry King question of "Why are there still monkeys?" hurts the most, because this argument has reached such horrifying levels of hilarious sadness in my heart. I joke of it often, and yet there it is actually coming up in the news as if it were an insightful question.

What Larry King really should have asked is, if Evolution is true...

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/50013/

WHY IS THERE STILL PEANUT BUTTER!?

Again, we're talking about levels of utter sadness that could make a unicorn made of rainbows burst into bitter, hateful tears. It all baffles me, personally. Remember how people used to say to the nerds in school, "Don't worry, someday they'll all be working for you?" They forgot to mention that they still won't vote for you or pay any attention to your ideas, and that you'll still be competing against the evil idiots who have learned how to sucker money out of their even dumber peers.

It seems to me like there used to be some kind of respect for intelligence in this country. Maybe I'm wrong, after all, people as far back as Plato have moaned about the stupidity of the current generation, but the outright hostility towards intellectuals is frightening in the extreme. There are actually people out there specifically targeting intelligence and education, and rather than getting laughed at for being the fools that they are, they have millions of glassy-eyed followers.

It just hurts. It really, really hurts. I fear the unicorns made of rainbows will never be happy again.