by Ryan Ariano

Created on: June 14, 2009   Last Updated: June 15, 2009

America isn't a country of idiots like the pundits would have you believe. Sure we spend too much time watching reality TV, bestowing privileges and acclaim to lunatic egotists who we like tearing down just as much as we like building up. But we're not dumb. We're just a country that's too busy worrying about getting through another day to ask questions, too comfortable when we finally get home to waste our time learning and even more, we're a country that doesn't much value intellectualism or intelligence as much as we do money, charisma or heart.

We let our leaders think for us, tell us what to do. The last time there was a real intellectual movement, when the brains in the room were being stroked and admired by all the young nubiles in the tri-state area, was during the great uprisings of the sixties. The populace was so outraged by the blase attitude of their middle class parents that they started to question the people at the top and questioned them vigorously. Uncomfortably. Frighteningly. People read a lot more back then. People don't read so much anymore. People spend too much time admiring the charismatic celebrity of the moment to read.

Part of it has to do with what has become of America industry now that the robber barons have given way to a new thoroughbred of chubby fast-talking snake oil salesmen oozing their way into the top position of most American business institutions. That's not to say that men like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs aren't smart and don't exist. And that's also not to say that the heads of most of these banks and automakers and all these companies aren't smart, though one would think a simple economics refresher course, maybe throw in a quick Acctg 101 at L.A. City College, could have prevented this whole government handout quagmire. These people at the top, however, have created a precedent for workaholicism that trickles down through the company chain so it's rapidly becoming more and more unamerican NOT to work a 70 hour work week. The financial hardtimes only reinforce our predilection to spend most of our waking hours sweating over the grindstone. There is no reward for knowing how national politics work when you're in that position and there's certainly never going to be a time when your boss asks you your thoughts on Goethe or Tolstoy - and certainly not David Foster Wallace or Cornel West. You speak 4 languages, read a literature book a week, understand quantum physics and can discuss the merits of Obama's foreign relations

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