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

I found Idiot America through a list of recommended books on Amazon, and I decided that I would give it a chance despite being somewhat leery of the title. For the most part I enjoyed it and I didn't really disagree with many of Pierce's arguments. However, I found that it dragged on somewhat and at times Pierce belabored his point.

Pierce's basic premise is that the rise of anti-intellectualism in the United States coupled with a redefinition of what is the truth (essentially truth has become anything that sells, is believed by a large number of people, and is said loudly enough) has led to a dangerous decline in America. Pierce gives an interesting background on what he says is the history of public "cranks" in America, essentially those individuals who expressed ludicrous ideas and attracted some attention, but who were generally ignored and were therefore harmless. According to Pierce, the existence of mass media has allowed those cranks to gain exposure to a wide audience and a platform that gives them authority, which places them in positions of influence and power that they should not occupy. This situation is exacerbated by the tendency of many major TV networks and other news outlets to give equal or greater time to self-professed "experts" on topics that they are not qualified to speak about as they do to actual experts.

Pierce looks at a number of issues to illustrate just how truth is easily redefined. He uses the example of the non-existent NAFTA super-highway as one issue that went from being a crazy conspiracy to a national discussion (and had influence in federal elections) because of the vicious cycle of the news media giving it coverage because people were interested, which made more people interested, which fueled more coverage. Pierce also looks at the right-wing dominated medium of talk radio as an area where truth is redefined by talking heads who have a wide audience eager to lap up what they dish out.

Pierce then goes on to illustrate how this redefinition of truth has given rise to what he calls "Idiot America," which is manipulated by those in power (particularly the right) to drown out opposition and sell their spin on issues. He surveys everything from the Terry Schiavo case to creationism to global warming deniers to the Iraq War. In general I found this to be the least interesting section of the book. It was well written and researched, but Pierce at times seemed to be beating his point into the reader, which got somewhat tedious. This is especially true in the lengthy section on the Iraq War, although that might have been because many of his points have been made repeatedly over the last decade by a wide range of other people.

Overall I enjoyed Idiot America, but I definitely found the first half or so of the book to be better than the last half. It also was definitely not a book that I think would change many minds on the issue, it was more in the style of preaching to the choir.