yewknee.com

Building A Nation Of Know-nothings

It can be a bit of a bummer on the whole but this Timothy Egan article, Building a Nation of Know-Nothings is a worthy read. Here's the gist:

Take a look at Tuesday night’s box score in the baseball game between New York and Toronto. The Yankees won, 11-5. Now look at the weather summary, showing a high of 71 for New York. The score and temperature are not subject to debate.

Yet a president’s birthday or whether he was even in the White House on the day TARP was passed are apparently open questions. A growing segment of the party poised to take control of Congress has bought into denial of the basic truths of Barack Obama’s life. What’s more, this astonishing level of willful ignorance has come about largely by design, and has been aided by a press afraid to call out the primary architects of the lies.

Some argued facts like the President's birthplace or his preferred denomination (or lack thereof) seem fairly harmless on the surface but if you extrapolate the behavior just a little bit you get:

But false belief in weapons of mass-destruction led the United States to a trillion-dollar war. And trust in rising home value as a truism as reliable as a sunrise was a major contributor to the catastrophic collapse of the economy. At its worst extreme, a culture of misinformation can produce something like Iran, which is run by a Holocaust denier.

Like I said.. a bit of a bummer on the whole but something everyone should read and make sure to question their sources and maybe do a little leg work of their own.