We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, & it was not meant that we should voyage far.
- Lovecraft
Perhaps I’m guilty of some seriously world-class naiveté, or perhaps I just don’t want to acknowledge what’s happening around me. I generally try to assume the best of people and not believe that they’re ignorant because they choose to ignore empirical reality. These days, though, I find myself having to own up to the reality that wantonly stupid and aggressively ill-informed is the new smart.
What I find so stunning…and alarming…is that Conservatives no longer even try to maintain the illusion of intellectual superiority. They don’t even try to pretend they are smarter and better equipped to do America’s intellectual and moral heavy lifting. No, they’ve decided that the path to power in our new idiocracy is by appealing to the lowest common intellectual denominator. They appeal to the stupid and the malleable through propaganda, disinformation, and the skillful disdain of the “Liberal intellectual elite”…as if having a brain and not being afraid to use it is somehow unAmerican.
In short, being ignorant has become a virtue among Conservatives, held up as the gold standard of intellectual commerce among those who’d sooner react than exercise brain cells.
[F]or modern Republicans, being downright proud of their ignorance has become a badge of honor, a way to demonstrate loyalty to the right-wing cause while also sticking it to those liberal pinheads who think there’s some kind of value in knowing what they’re talking about before offering an opinion.
This mentality, in its modern form, can be traced back to the Bush White House. In 2004, Ron Suskind of the New York Times interviewed an unnamed Bush official who famously pooh-poohed what he believed to be the shortcomings of journalists who insist that the truth matters more than fantasy:
The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”
“We create our own reality.” Five words that perfectly describe “American Exceptionalism”- except that there’s nothing exceptional about it. The sheer arrogance of that falls well beyond my limited ability to understand it. This attitude was rampant among the Bush administration, and the Tea Party has resurrected it in 2010 and elevated it to a virtue, something to aspire to. All one really needs to do is to look at the Texas Congressional delegation. With intellectual midgets like Pete Olson, Louie Gohmert, Joe Barton, Ted Cruz, Ted Poe, Jeb Hensarling, Michael McCaul, Randy Neugebauer, Steve Stockman, Blake Farenthold, Pete Sessions, John Cornyn, and…well, you get the point, right? Intellectual rigor isn’t exactly a virtue among these enemies of the “Liberal intellectual elite.”
Then there’s Sarah Palin, who’s managed to elevate aggressively, self-righteous, mean-spirited ignorance to an art form. I could also go into great detail about the anti-intellectualism of Ann Coulter, S.E. Cupp, Laura Ingraham, Gretchen Carlson, and the rest of the talking heads at Fox News Channel, where truth is whatever the Right needs it to be. I could, but I see no reason why I should.
The stupid, it is strong, no?
Here’s the problem with this new emphasis on ignorance: There’s no way for America to retain even a shred of the “American Exceptionalism” Conservatives gleefully trumpet at every opportunity. How is ignorance of truth and denial of discernible reality supposed to help America compete in an increasingly global economy? There’s no benefit to be realized through aggressive, willful ignorance, and the damage done will not be easily undone.
Is it any wonder why I fear for the future of this (soon to be formerly) great country? We’re allowing agents of ignorance and idiocy to chart our course based of falsehoods and disinformation. There’s no telling which shore we’ll wash up on…but one day we’ll awaken to an American where idiots rule and the educated are shunned and treated like criminals. The transition to our American idiocracy will be complete.
Idiocracy may have been just a movie, but it could well be a glimpse of the future awaiting us. Nice work, America.
