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What Members Thought
A funny, intelligent and quite frightening look at how the people that used to be called cranks and crackpots are now running the country and setting up the rules for how we deal with and talk about issues.
Pierce shows how the cranks used to dwell on the fringes and were entertaining and occasionally got us to rethink our ideas, are now driving the bus and somehow being willfully ignorant has become seen as a positive trait and people who have actually studied a subject and deal in facts are dee ...more
Pierce shows how the cranks used to dwell on the fringes and were entertaining and occasionally got us to rethink our ideas, are now driving the bus and somehow being willfully ignorant has become seen as a positive trait and people who have actually studied a subject and deal in facts are dee ...more
This book wasn't quite what I had expected. I thought I was getting a collection of biting and humorous essays on the nuttier aspects of the political and cultural right, like an Al Franken. Instead Idiot America is more of a history lesson, with forays into the fringe elements connected with 8 years of George W. Bush. Pierce uses the historical touchstone of James Madison to comment on how our society has gone askew from his original ideals written into the constitution and Federalist Papers.
It ...more
It ...more
Idiot America takes a somewhat "tongue-in-cheek" approach to the idiocy that most of us rant about to people that we know beforehand will agree with us. Pierce is one of the people... However, instead of stopping with platitudes, Pierce studies the idiocy and comes to a rather interesting conclusion: the idiots in America are not those that propose idiotic ideas, but those that accept the ideas.
The book orbits around the relatively unknown author (Ignacious Donelly) who wrote the book Atlantis: ...more
The book orbits around the relatively unknown author (Ignacious Donelly) who wrote the book Atlantis: ...more
Aug 06, 2011
Andrew
added it
Some good ideas, but a bit "ranty."
...more
Charlie Pierce chronicles the migration of "Cranks" from the fringes of American subculture to the limelight of 24 hour news and the houses of political power in the US. At times entertaining and yet disheartening for someone living within the time and county where faith and reason, fiction and fact, and learned expertise and loud opinion have been shuffled and muddied to perhaps an irreparable degree.
...more
May 12, 2009
Worthless Bum
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May 14, 2009
Jake Barlow
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May 14, 2009
Richard
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May 15, 2009
Julie
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Jul 16, 2009
Michael
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Aug 20, 2009
Kristina
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Sep 07, 2010
Louis
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really liked it
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review of another edition
Shelves:
humour,
read-in-2013
Nov 03, 2010
Hiten Soni
marked it as to-read
Oct 31, 2011
Chris Irwin Davis
rated it
liked it
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review of another edition
Shelves:
non-fiction,
critical-thinking
Dec 20, 2012
Steve
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Dec 04, 2013
Angela
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Oct 08, 2021
Karigan
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