We're doomed. And I really mean it this time

One of the most dead-on posts ever on this board, in my opinion. We truly live in a culture of mediocrity.

 

I've posted this before but Charles Pierce's Esquire article, "Greetings from Idiot America" pretty much sums it up.

This is a must-read.

http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0207GREETINGS

The rise of Idiot America is essentially a war on expertise. It's not so much antimodernism or the distrust of intellectual elites that Richard Hofstadter deftly teased out of the national DNA forty years ago. Both of those things are part of it. However, the rise of Idiot America today represents -- for profit mainly, but also, and more cynically, for political advantage and in the pursuit of power -- the breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people whom we should trust the least are the people who best know what they're talking about. In the new media age, everybody is a historian, or a preacher, or a scientist, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert.

In the place of expertise, we have elevated the Gut, and the Gut is a moron, as anyone who has ever tossed a golf club, punched a wall, or kicked an errant lawn mower knows. We occasionally dress up the Gut by calling it "common sense." The president's former advisor on medical ethics regularly refers to the "yuck factor." The Gut is common. It is democratic. It is the roiling repository of dark and ancient fears. Worst of all, the Gut is faith-based.

 

Did I miss something or did Stoob's post get nuked?

 

Nope. It's been happening a lot tonight. Just check out the Jemele thread on Sports and News.

 

He had a whole thread nuked earlier today that consisted of, honest to god, him asking "How would you define the war on terror?"

Lasted about 2 minutes. Could have been an all-timer.

 

I wondered what happened to that thread.

 

Only in Stoob's world.

Tsk, tsk.

 

My world is perfect. I remain the straw that stirs the emotions and the drinks here. You talk about me even when I'm not around. Amazing.

 

NOT FUNNY!