Idiot America, Charles P. Pierce
Idiot America, Charles P. Pierce
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Idiot America
How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free

Author: Charles P. Pierce

Narrator: Bronson Pinchot

Unabridged: 9 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/16/2011

Synopsis

The culture wars are over and the idiots have won. This is a veteran journalists caustically funny, righteously angry lament about the glorification of ignorance in the United States.The three Great Premises of Idiot America: Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units; anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough; fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it. Charles Pierce has led a careerlong quest to separate the smart from the pap, and now its time to try and salvage the Land of the Enlightened, buried somewhere in this new Home of the Uninformed. With his razorsharp wit and erudite reasoning, Pierce delivers a gutwrenching, sidesplitting lament about the glorification of ignorance in the United States and how a country founded on intellectual curiosity has deteriorated into a nation of simpletons more apt to vote for an American Idol contestant than a presidential candidate. With Idiot America, Pierces thunderous denunciation is also a secret call to action, as he hopes that, somehow, being intelligent will stop being a stigma and that pinheads will once again be pitied, not celebrated.

About Charles P. Pierce

Charles P. Pierce is a staff writer for the Boston Globe Magazine, a contributing writer for Esquire, and a frequent contributor to American Prospect and Slate. His work has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Nation, Atlantic, and Chicago Tribune, among other publications, and he is a regular on NPR’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me and Only a Game.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Bill on August 06, 2019

Ben Carson, our Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, believes that Joseph (the dude from Genesis) built the pyramids to store the grain reserves of Egypt, and that The Adversary (BKA "Satan") personally encouraged Darwin to write The Origin of the Species. And Donald Trump--who believes thous......more

Goodreads review by Nandakishore on February 09, 2017

The three great premises of Idiot America, according to Charles P. Pierce: Premise 1: Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units. Premise 2: Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough. Premise 3: Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determ......more

Goodreads review by Baba on May 02, 2020

Veteran journalist Charles Pierce delivers a lamentable critique of the glorification of the idiot and damnation of the intelligentsia in modern America. He looks at the growth and right wing domination of Talk Radio, looks at reality TV, checks out the rise of essentially idiot 'experts' who do not......more

Goodreads review by Ivonne on September 04, 2017

Surprisingly enough, author Charles P. Pierce comes to praise cranks, not to bury them — at least, the good old-fashioned type of cranks. Per Pierce, cranks and crackpot ideas are eminently American; why their right to expound ideas — “no matter how howlingly mad” — are enshrined in the very First A......more

Goodreads review by Adrian on March 13, 2011

This turned out to be one of the most partisan books I've read in years, but was still helpful in putting words to the climate of Idiocracy that's risen to prominence in the US, and to some extent Canada. The book lays much of the blame at the feet of conservatives and religious extremists (i.e. eva......more

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