Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free by Charles P. Pierce takes a look on the rise of anti-intellectualism in the United States. Mr. Pierce is a writer for Esquire, writes an on-line political blog, and also contributes to the on-line sports magazine Grantland.
- 304 pages
- Publisher : Doubleday
- Language : English
- ISBN-10 : 0767926145
My rating for Idiot America – 4
Buy Idiot America from Amazon.com*
More books by Charles P. Pierce*
Thoughts:
This was an interesting, but also infuriating book to read. The book is well researched, and attempts to be funny (and sometimes succeeded), but certainly has a left leaning bias even though the author does brings infuriating examples from both sides of the aisle.
The main theme of Idiot America by Charles P. Pierce is that people rely more on gut instinct than they do on objective facts, and gut instinct is almost always wrong. This was also a theme of The Art of Attack by Maxie Reynolds, which mainly focuses on social engineering, in which she talks about turning people’s gut instinct against them.
The sad part is that this book could have been written today, instead of 2009, and the finding would be the same. Our culture has embraced “cranks” to the point where there opinion has the same weight as objective truth from learned experts.
The premises of the book are not new, if enough people believe a loud crank it becomes fact, and if one’s opinion/gut feeling is valid if it makes money. Yuval Noah Harrari’s book Nexus, doesn’t exactly agree with that last point, but it does focuses on the power of stories which have shaped our culture and civilization.
One of the more interesting arguments is that Americans have challenged the status quo for centuries. We love eccentrics who challenge our thoughts and sometimes even bring new ideas to the table. However, we have moved from those who challenge us in order to be productive, to what he calls the “Idiot American Crank” that truly think that their strongly held beliefs be treated with the same reverence as a scientific paper, and if they say it loud enough, it’s equivalent to one that was peer reviewed.
While I didn’t care for many of the put downs in the book, they just seem snarky, childish or mean, I agree with much of what the author writes about. Experts are looked down upon, a gut feeling is just as legitimate as research, and the media promotes idiocy to make money.
Unfortunately, the author’s plea for America to wake up has fallen on deaf ears. But that battle has been lost the day social media went online.
Buy Idiot America from Amazon.com*
More books by Charles P. Pierce*
Zohar — Man of la Book
Disclaimer: I bought this book
*Amazon links point to an affiliate account, the money is usually spent on books
