Idiot America?

Shortly after I finished reading “The Political Mind” and another book titled “Idiot America” by Charles P. Pierce, Michael Jackson bit the dust. Every time I saw something on television or in the newspaper about his demise and the funeral, etc., the Pierce title came to mind. Seems the Michael Jackson memorial extravaganza revealed much about the mentality of many of our citizens. As David Brooks wrote about Jackson in a New York Times column: “Here was a guy who was apparently untouched by any pressure to live according to the rules and restraints of adulthood.” Yet the number of people who escape from reality by groveling at the feet of celebrities and who apparently lack insight into the psyches and actions of the depraved and egocentric makes you wonder just who is going to keep their heads above water while so many are going under.

A letter to the editor at that time told it like it is: “The media driven mania over Michael Jackson’s death is an indictment of extreme celebrity obsession and all the damage done by spreading what has become a destructive social sickness.”

Now, in 2018, it’s frightening to realize that there are still so many people who don’t recognize the pathology of those who are so obsessed with themselves. Often, the more “way out” and the more outrageous, the more attention they get from clueless fans who don’t see the potential of the problem and what it can do to the future of our nation. Seems like the more the celebrities lie and cheat and carry on in despicable ways, the more their fans become turned on and the more noise (whether reasonable or not) politicians make and the more outrageous their behavior, the more followers they accumulate. The mindless fans seem to be obsessed with that adrenaline rush — never mind the incongruity of it all. Seems that’s how we got a president who, as Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson laments: “The biggest concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency, but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us.”  

People who act with dignity, intelligence, prudence, restraint and decorum are not often seen on the front pages of newspapers or featured on commercial television. Those who are brazen, crude, crass, ignorant and suffering from arrested development are much more likely to be held up as American idols.

“Idiot America” will continue to accelerate us down the path to oblivion at an ever increasing rate if our plentiful supply of oddballs and misfits continue to be revered and worshipped by those who live vicariously through celebrities and if more Americans allow themselves to be brainwashed by whatever politician or salesman makes the most noise and gets the most press. Trouble is, as Marilyn Ferguson wrote in “The Aquarian Conspiracy”: “We cannot leave the trap until we know we are in it.” 

And add some comments from a few more sagacious people like Arianna Huffington: “After years without an inclusive moral vision for our country, we have to remind the American people that we are a republic built on responsibilities to each other, not just to ourselves.” — “Fanatics and Fools.”

Unfortunately, what Haynes Johnson wrote in 1991 applies even more accurately today. “America’s greatest test in the ’90s lies not beyond its borders, but within. If America fails, it will likely be from internal causes and probably because of four factors: from its failure to address long festering social and economic problems and growing divisions among its citizenry, from subversion of its constitutional system … from the corruption and ineffectiveness of its government, and from the cynicism and inattention of its people.”

“Pierce’s basic tenet: “Never has a nation so dedicated itself to the proposition that people should hold nutty ideas, but they should cultivate them, hold them up and put them right up there on the mantelpiece.”

Since 1984, Dorothy Dimitre has written more than 950 columns for various local newspapers. Her email address is gramsd@aceweb.com.