“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or
grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and
information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have
slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are
in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest
can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set
their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when,
clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our
critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels
good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into
superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of America is most
evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously
influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or
less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on
pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of
ignorance”
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
If you continue reading, the chapter goes on to talk about how the most popular videocassette rental was Dumb and Dumber, and how Beavis and Butthead was incredibly popular on TV.
― The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
