The Rise of Idiot America
My LJ friend panserbjorne kindly brought my attention to an article in Esquire magazine called "Greetings from Idiot America." Alas, I couldn't read the entire online article, as it requires a subscription to KeepMedia, but an insightful commentary by P. Z. Myers, with extensive quotes from the original article, is available here.
The author of the Esquire article, Charles P. Pierce, defines Idiot America as "...where fact is merely that which enough people believe, and truth is measured only by how fervently they believe it." He describes the ascendancy of Idiot America as a "war on expertise":
It's not so much antimodernism or the distrust of intellectual elites that Richard Hofstadter deftly teased out of the national DNA forty years ago. Both of those things are part of it. However, the rise of Idiot America today represents-for profit mainly, but also, and more cynically, for political advantage in the pursuit of power-the breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people whom we should trust the least are the people who know best what they are talking about. In the new media age, everybody is a historian, or a preacher, or a scientist, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert.
As a scientist-a real, educated scientist, mind you, and not a creation "scientist" or ID iot-I have been complaining for years about people who know absolutely nothing about biology yet feel qualified to take a vocal stand against evolution. Pierce addresses this topic, as well:
On August 21, a newspaper account of the "intelligent design" movement contained this remarkable sentence: "They have mounted a politically savvy challenge to evolution as the bedrock of modern biology, propelling a fringe academic movement onto the front pages and putting Darwin's defenders firmly on the defensive."
A "politically savvy challenge to evolution" is as self-evidently ridiculous as an agriculturally savvy challenge to Euclidean geometry would be. It makes as much sense as conducting a Gallup poll on gravity or running someone for president on the Alchemy party ticket. It doesn't matter what percentage of people believe they ought to be able to flap their arms and fly, none of them can. It doesn't matter how many votes your candidate got, he's not going to turn lead into gold. This sentence is so arrantly foolish that the only real news is where it appeared.
On the front page.
Of the New York Times.
Within three days, there was a panel on the subject on Larry King Live, in which Larry asked the following question:
"All right, hold on. Dr. Forest, your concept of how can you out-and-out turn down creationism, since if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?"
And why do so many of them host television programs, Larry?
And I love this jab at the odious term that has recently infiltrated into way too many facets American government and society:
It's a dishonest phrase for a dishonest time, "faith-based," a cheap huckster's phony term of art. It sounds like an additive, an artificial flavoring to make crude biases taste of bread and wine. It's a word for people without the courage to say they are religious, and it is beloved not only by politicians too cowardly to debate something as substantial as faith but also by Idiot America, which is too lazy to do it.
P. Z. Myers, in his commentary, defends the harshly satirical bent of both Pierce's article and his own writing:
You would be surprised at how much email is sent to me telling me to stop being so derisive, that harsh language and ridicule turn people off and repel the very ones we're trying to persuade. My reply is like the one above; by refusing to ridicule the ridiculous, by watering down every criticism into a mannered circumlocution, we have created an environment where idiots thrive unchallenged. We have a twit for a president because so many people made apologies for his ludicrous lack of qualifications-we need more people unabashedly pointing out fools.
I'm doing my part to fight Idiot America. I hope more people join me.
[raises hand and waves it wildly] Oh! Me! MEEEEE! I'll help you, Dr. Myers!
In a comment to Myers's article, Charlie Wagner quoted from Umberto Eco "a set of axioms on which all fascisms agree":
The author of the Esquire article, Charles P. Pierce, defines Idiot America as "...where fact is merely that which enough people believe, and truth is measured only by how fervently they believe it." He describes the ascendancy of Idiot America as a "war on expertise":
It's not so much antimodernism or the distrust of intellectual elites that Richard Hofstadter deftly teased out of the national DNA forty years ago. Both of those things are part of it. However, the rise of Idiot America today represents-for profit mainly, but also, and more cynically, for political advantage in the pursuit of power-the breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people whom we should trust the least are the people who know best what they are talking about. In the new media age, everybody is a historian, or a preacher, or a scientist, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert.
As a scientist-a real, educated scientist, mind you, and not a creation "scientist" or ID iot-I have been complaining for years about people who know absolutely nothing about biology yet feel qualified to take a vocal stand against evolution. Pierce addresses this topic, as well:
On August 21, a newspaper account of the "intelligent design" movement contained this remarkable sentence: "They have mounted a politically savvy challenge to evolution as the bedrock of modern biology, propelling a fringe academic movement onto the front pages and putting Darwin's defenders firmly on the defensive."
A "politically savvy challenge to evolution" is as self-evidently ridiculous as an agriculturally savvy challenge to Euclidean geometry would be. It makes as much sense as conducting a Gallup poll on gravity or running someone for president on the Alchemy party ticket. It doesn't matter what percentage of people believe they ought to be able to flap their arms and fly, none of them can. It doesn't matter how many votes your candidate got, he's not going to turn lead into gold. This sentence is so arrantly foolish that the only real news is where it appeared.
On the front page.
Of the New York Times.
Within three days, there was a panel on the subject on Larry King Live, in which Larry asked the following question:
"All right, hold on. Dr. Forest, your concept of how can you out-and-out turn down creationism, since if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?"
And why do so many of them host television programs, Larry?
And I love this jab at the odious term that has recently infiltrated into way too many facets American government and society:
It's a dishonest phrase for a dishonest time, "faith-based," a cheap huckster's phony term of art. It sounds like an additive, an artificial flavoring to make crude biases taste of bread and wine. It's a word for people without the courage to say they are religious, and it is beloved not only by politicians too cowardly to debate something as substantial as faith but also by Idiot America, which is too lazy to do it.
P. Z. Myers, in his commentary, defends the harshly satirical bent of both Pierce's article and his own writing:
You would be surprised at how much email is sent to me telling me to stop being so derisive, that harsh language and ridicule turn people off and repel the very ones we're trying to persuade. My reply is like the one above; by refusing to ridicule the ridiculous, by watering down every criticism into a mannered circumlocution, we have created an environment where idiots thrive unchallenged. We have a twit for a president because so many people made apologies for his ludicrous lack of qualifications-we need more people unabashedly pointing out fools.
I'm doing my part to fight Idiot America. I hope more people join me.
[raises hand and waves it wildly] Oh! Me! MEEEEE! I'll help you, Dr. Myers!
In a comment to Myers's article, Charlie Wagner quoted from Umberto Eco "a set of axioms on which all fascisms agree":
- The truth is revealed once and only once.
- Parliamentary democracy is by definition rotten because it doesn't represent the voice of the people, which is that of the sublime leader.
- Doctrine outpoints reason, and science is always suspect.
- Critical thought is the province of degenerate intellectuals, who betray the culture and subvert traditional values.
- The national identity is provided by the nation's enemies.
- Argument is tantamount to treason.
- Perpetually at war, the state must govern with the instruments of fear.
- Citizens do not act; they play the supporting role of "the people" in the grand opera that is the state.