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“Idiot America” and What It Means To You
Just finishing up that great book on the current popular and political climate that is the USA, “Idiot America – How stupidity became a virtue in the Land of the Free” by Charles P Pierce, and I’m seeing some parallels between the USA and Australia. Though many of the initial conditions in America have not been replicated here, Australia being founded from a stance of convenience for the British colonisers, and America from a need to escape from religious, social and political prejudices. This makes a large difference to where we are now in history, but many of the points about what is happening now are equally valid.
Pierce’s “Idiot America” is founded on 3 basic principles:
Premise One: Any theory is valid if it moves units or otherwise makes money. Premise Two: Anything can be true if it is said loudly enough. Premise Three: Fact is that which enough people believe.
Comment
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Comment by Marianne on February 16, 2012 at 8:45pm -
I must admit that I smiled reading that review, kind of forgetting the reality of it... I want to read this book...
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Comment by doone on February 12, 2012 at 7:03pm -
Quote For The Day
“Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind," - George Orwellin “Politics and the English Language."
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Comment by Michel on February 12, 2012 at 11:18am -
“Well I know, and it’s true, but some people tell me it’s just an American problem, but what I tell them is that The United States exports everything, both good and bad, so just wait.”
We know of that from uncomfortably upclose in Canada. Our own current conservative government is a Bush-era export. Here are a few corollaries to the three principles:
1 - Keep it simple, very simple.
2 - Repeat, repeat, repeat.
3 - What is true? Ask your neighbor.
The question of who benefits from this dumbing down, however vital, is to be avoided at all costs, of course.
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Comment by Chris on February 12, 2012 at 12:47am -
The only ones who think stupidity is a virtue are Republican Presidential candidates and corporations who are trying to sell inferior products to the consumer. ;>
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Comment by Adriana on February 11, 2012 at 5:35pm -
Sigh. This would be an entertaining book if I didn’t live in America. Those 3 premises are too true to be funny…Especially the 3rd one. The scariest part is that America is still a very powerful, influential nation. With a public willing to believe anything, and increasingly hostile to science and reason, summed to the limitless corporate influence on the public sphere, all neatly wrapped in religious folly, the whole planet ends up being imperiled. Think climate change denialism, for example. Not to mention the blind faith in free market capitalism and its power to resolve all issues.
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