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David Sirota

David Sirota

Posted: November 20, 2009 12:49 PM

How the Media's Proud Know-Nothingism Helped Create the American Idiocracy

What's Your Reaction?

The term "idiocracy" means a nation run by idiots - and the term idiot is defined as "an utterly foolish or senseless person" and/or a "person of the lowest order in a former classification of mental retardation, having a mental age of less than three years old." There are many reasons to conclude that America has become a full-fledged Idiocracy - bad decisions after bad decisions after bad decisions really have suggested that the last decade has seen the ascension of utterly foolish, senseless people of the lowest order in a former classification of mental retardation.

And yet, as I show in my newspaper column out today, if there was still any shred of doubt that we had avoided becoming an Idiocracy, it was only fully snuffed out in the last week by David Broder and Jackson Diehl - two of the alleged "deans" of the Washington media intelligentsia.

Here is Broder attacking President Obama for taking the time to carefully consider whether to send an additional 40,000 American troops into an increasingly Vietnam-like Afghanistan quagmire:

The more President Obama examines our options in Afghanistan, the less he likes the choices he sees...The urgent necessity is to make a decision -- whether or not it is right.

That was followed by Diehl who made much the same argument in a subsequent column.

Let's set aside the nauseating spectacle of two crotchety old men, comfortably protected in their plush Washington offices demanding a president send 40,000 troops potentially to their deaths without regard for whether that's the right decision. Let's just put that grotesque immorality in the corner, and pretend it's not important - and let's go to the deeper message of aggressive pro-idiocy.

Broder and Diehl are paid to think carefully about issues and then offer their opinions on those issues. That's not part of what they're supposed to do - it's what they do. It's the way they make a living, it's what they're supposed to derive their credibility from - indeed, it's their entire raison d'etre.

And yet, these supposed leading lights of the intelligentsia, these professional thinkers, are overtly preaching anti-intelligence. They are quite clearly insisting that the proper course of action for a president is to avoid applying intelligence and avoid thinking at all. And both of them aren't even being subtle about it.

Read my column here for my take on exactly what all this means - and why it is so deeply disturbing.


The column relies on grassroots support -- and because of that support, it is getting wider and wider circulation (a big thank you to all who have helped with that). So if you'd like to see my column regularly in your local paper, use this directory to find the contact info for your local editorial page editors. Get get in touch with them and point them to my Creators Syndicate site. Thanks, as always, for your ongoing readership and help contacting local editors. This column couldn't be what it is without your help.

 
 
 
 
 
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11:46 AM on 11/23/2009
"utterly foolish and senseless person", could be someone that claims criticism for behavior that is no different then one's own.

David, your writing reek's of the same hatred towards Conservatives that you claim they have for Obama. For the previous eight years, the country was overloaded with hate speech regarding Bush with not a cry of foul. Protest after protest after protest spewed vile comments from individuals regarding their hatred for that POTUS. Many Conservatives have learned from the mistakes of supporting Bush....and see that Obama is following in the same directions in many ways that Bush led.......

So get off your high-horse and see the conflict for what it is.....a country divided. The hate speech you spew or that anyone spits continues the divide.
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Eris23
Justice is in indefinite detention.
12:10 PM on 11/23/2009
"Many Conservatives have learned from the mistakes of supporting Bush...."

LOL! Meanwhile, none of your representatives seem to agree. When we see disapproval via action, rather than talk, get back to us.
10:48 AM on 11/22/2009
While you focus on commentary, David, I would say also that the actual "news" coverage of war topics, conflict regions & other international news is terribly at fault too, esp. out in the world of broadcast & cable journalism. How can Americans get any real sense of what is happening out in the world at large, let alone in places like Afghanistan? A comparison of European & international broadcasts for any day of the week, eventful news or not, with a typical CNN, ABC program or the like reveals deficiencies so stark as to be terribly embarrassing for American journalists. What passes for "world news" by the MSM is sadly laughable by international standards. I would even go so far as to say some of the news about the USA is superior out on the international networks. I have seen interesting stories on immigration, race relations, politics in states like California, arms & weapons manufacturing in the South that people all over the world are watching, but not in the USA! Laura Flanders on Grit TV featured a Russian English language segment on a protest taking place outside the White House that didn't make it into the prime time in the USA. The media moguls have surely brought our news broadcasting to a new low. It appears that print journalism isn't very far behind.
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iamjones
01:09 AM on 11/22/2009
the wounds from the past 8 years are wide and deep. the festering continues. it's gonna take a lot more than a band aid or some stitches - this baby need some major reconstructive surgery..... except we were found to have a pre-existing condition. oh well, i guess we're scr8wed.
05:18 PM on 11/21/2009
"They are quite clearly insisting that the proper course of action for a president is to avoid applying intelligence and avoid thinking at all."

Could be just as driving a car. You don't think about it.

Either you think and reflect or you do and decide. There is a time for both.
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DanGreen
10:18 AM on 11/23/2009
What is this supposed to be an argument for?
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drkazmd65
Mom Taught me - Question Everything - Thanks Mom!
11:12 AM on 11/24/2009
I don't know,... generally while I am driving my car in traffic I AM THINKING about what is going on around me,.... even if shifting gears, operating the clutch, and using whacky contraptions like mirrors and turn signals are relatively automatic & unthinking outcomes derived from those thoughts.

Methinks you are either making a false anology, or you are one of those other drivers that I am always bitching should pay attention to what is going on around them.

I would argue that the time for doing both thinking & acting are intertwined.
04:58 PM on 11/21/2009
Judging by the intelligence evident in this analysis, as well as the concerned and thoughtful responses of every reader who left a comment, there is still some hope. But there are so many complexities adding to the problem of diminishing intelligence - not just in the United States, by the way, by all over the world. The Internet is Pandora's Box - it has been astoundingly fantastic, but also created alot of tremendous problems - in terms of manipulation of reality and the lack of filters on false information.
07:30 PM on 11/21/2009
Unfortunately, diminishing intelligence is US and US only phenomena. The rest of the world is advancing in the right direction. This is what Americans do not see. We live in 19 century capitalism mentality, we blame media and Internet, incapable to see that the Empire is naked.
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Jimboy17
11:40 AM on 11/21/2009
Fear and anxiety create need in the consumer. The consumer, too stu.pid to know what else to do, consumes, the rich get richer, and the media feeds the fear fire. What could be better?
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Weirdo
"It's a Wall Street government"
11:31 AM on 11/21/2009
The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

-- Bertrand Russell, "Christian Ethics" from Marriage and Morals (1950), quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief
fredgladys
Your Micro-bio is empty, I know, stop nagging.
02:14 PM on 11/22/2009
So very true and so very scary
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Matt Osborne
10:31 AM on 11/21/2009
This is why I would never, ever make it as a pundit. I'd be ripping these village nincompoops a new one on the air.
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drkazmd65
Mom Taught me - Question Everything - Thanks Mom!
11:14 AM on 11/24/2009
You too Mr. Osborne?

There is a time to be polite and listen,... but once the idiots have revealed themselves to be complete idiots it is time to stop listening to them.
09:52 AM on 11/21/2009
Kakocracy or kakistocracy are also quite apt.
11:06 PM on 11/20/2009
Here is the good news to that. A site dedicated to the demise of newspapers, with a list of
recently folded papers:
http://www.newspaperdeathwatch.com/
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10:59 PM on 11/20/2009
dumbing down of AMERICA Idiocracy pretty well sums it up, especially the unbridled and unabashed eight year crime spree of the last administration. The mafia isn't even in the same class as these people
09:25 PM on 11/20/2009
That sure explains the popularity of Sarah Palin.
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Eris23
Justice is in indefinite detention.
12:12 PM on 11/23/2009
Indeed it does.
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06:40 PM on 11/20/2009
Obama's "war of necessity" statement, the phrase he put forth to appease the hawkish right, has made him an easy target. Had he taken the humanitarian route from the start and distanced himself from assertions like "war of necessity," there wouldn't be the danger of looking like a back-peddler as there is now. Make a statement like that, and then take time to consider the next course, and you get called a weak, ditherer. So easy for critics to say, "if this is a war of necessity, as you yourself proclaimed, then why the stalling?"

As soon as he uttered the words "war of necessity," I knew it was game over for any hopes of an end to war.

He's not a stupid man. He knows that this mission isn't worth the cost in lives and money. He knows this is about as 'winnable' as Vietnam was. He knows he's worked himself into a corner and he doesn't know what to do. That's what's taking so long.

His politics of appeasement are proving ineffective in implementing any kind of real change. One strong, unshakable stance, give us just one.
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DanGreen
10:20 AM on 11/23/2009
Do you mean back-pedaler?
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01:27 PM on 11/23/2009
yeah.
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ProfessorDuh
06:36 PM on 11/20/2009
Rattled by vapid rat-a-tat text messaging in traffic, sweet-poisoned by advertising, pounded by political propaganda, lulled by lies on every side, American brains are softening even as we speak.
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TexasDem0
USMC Vietnam combat vet
06:02 PM on 11/20/2009
Idiocracy pretty well sums it up, especially the unbridled and unabashed eight year crime spree of the last administration.