A Knight in Dragonland

I know I share common cause with fellow blogger Eyebrows McGee when I bemoan the dumbing down of American political discourse … or public discourse in general. The jocks have always been more popular than the nerds, but the American anti-intellectual streak has taken on newfound strength and even virulence in recent years. Even some obviously intelligent individuals seem to fall victim to its impulses on occasion.

Along these lines, a New York Times editorial by columnist Nicholas Kristof caught my eye today. In response to the incredulity of some of his readers that 30% of African-Americans believe that HIV was deliberately engineered by the federal government to kill black people (one of the topics brought up in Jeremiah Wright’s infamous sermons), Kristof provides a laundry list of stupid ideas and harebrained theories that a large fraction of all Americans, white or black, hold to be true.

Money quote:

The dumbing-down of discourse has been particularly striking since the 1970s. Think of the devolution of the emblematic conservative voice from William Buckley to Bill O’Reilly. It’s enough to make one doubt Darwin.

There’s no simple solution, but the complex and incomplete solution is a greater emphasis on education at every level. And maybe, just maybe, this cycle has run its course, for the last seven years perhaps have discredited the anti-intellectualism movement. President Bush, after all, is the movement’s epitome — and its fruit.