"Hey Charlie Pierce, Are You Writing 'Idiot America, VOL. TWO' Yet?"

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http://firedoglake.com/2010/01/16/hey-charlie-are-you-writing-idiot-america-volume-two-yet

Hey Charlie, Are You Writing “Idiot America, Volume Two” yet?

By: Peterr Saturday January 16, 2010 9:00 am

Whether he knows it or not, Charlie Pierce probably understands the Prop 8 trial going on in Judge Walker’s courtroom in California better than anyone else.

Reading through the liveblog threads of the trial, and then pondering the bigger picture posts, I found myself going back to Charlie’s book Idiot America again and again and again — as well as his FDL Book Salon chat.

With a few name changes, Charlie’s description of the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial could be used to describe the action in Perry v. Schwarzenegger. For instance . . .

Like so much of the blasted landscape of Idiot America, the Dover trial was a war on expertise, and Judge Jones was the last expert standing. Pastor Mummert had laid out the shape of the battlefield early on, when he described Dover as besieged by its intelligent and educated elements. The people to be most distrusted were those who actually knew what they were talking about. (p. 153)

You know, like scientific researchers who understand statistics being questioned by lawyers who don’t. Like gays and lesbians who understand what it is actually like to be gay or lesbian being questioned by lawyers who don’t.

- snip -

The parallels between Dover and Perry are stunning, and if you’ve got Idiot America already, it’s worth digging out and re-reading that chapter. After the passage quoted above, he continued like this:

This is how people get elected while claiming not to be politicians. This is how, through the new mass media technologies best exemplified by the successful know-nothingism of talk radio, everyone is an expert, if they can move units or budge the needle. Everyone is a historian, or a preacher, or a scientist, or a political sage. Why should anyone pay Sean Hannity, an NYU dropout, a dime to talk about stem cell research?

Why not ask the guy who fixes your car?

Why not the guy on the next bar stool?

Why not you?

Of course, if everyone is an expert, then nobody is. The worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert.

Hmmm . . . “This is how people get elected” you say?

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