On one level, this is easy to answer. Ignorant politicians are elected by ignorant people. US education, like the US health system, is notorious for its failures. In the most powerful nation on earth,
§ 20% of adults believes the sun revolves round the earth;
§ 26% accept that evolution takes place by means of natural selection;
§ 66% of young adults are unable to find Iraq on a map;
§ 66% of US voters cannot name the three branches of government;
§ the maths skills of 15-year-olds in the US are ranked 24th out of the 29 countries of the OECD.

But this merely extends the mystery: how did so many US citizens become so stupid, and so suspicious of intelligence?[/b[b]...

On one level, this is easy to answer. Ignorant politicians are elected by ignorant people. US education, like the US health system, is notorious for its failures. In the most powerful nation on earth,
§ 20% of adults believes the sun revolves round the earth;
§ 26% accept that evolution takes place by means of natural selection;
§ 66% of young adults are unable to find Iraq on a map;
§ 66% of US voters cannot name the three branches of government;
§ the maths skills of 15-year-olds in the US are ranked 24th out of the 29 countries of the OECD.

But this merely extends the mystery: how did so many US citizens become so stupid, and so suspicious of intelligence? Susan Jacoby's book The Age of American Unreason provides the fullest explanation I have read so far. She shows that the degradation of US politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies.

One theme is both familiar and clear:
religion - in particular fundamentalist religion - makes you stupid. The US is the only rich country in which Christian fundamentalism is vast and growing.

Jacoby shows that there was once a certain logic to its anti-rationalism. During the first few decades after the publication of The Origin of Species, for instance, Americans had good reason to reject the theory of natural selection and to treat public intellectuals with suspicion. From the beginning, Darwin's theory was mixed up in the US with the brutal philosophy - now known as social Darwinism - of the British writer Herbert Spencer. Spencer's doctrine, promoted in the popular press with the help of funding from Andrew Carnegie, John D Rockefeller and Thomas Edison, suggested that millionaires stood at the top of a scala natura established by evolution. By preventing unfit people being weeded out, government intervention weakened the nation. Gross economic inequalities were both justifiable and necessary.

Most of reading this article - non bushel supporters as advised - have known the truth of this for a long time. To see it articulated so well is an endorsement of our attempts to use reason and intellect against blind faith in one man who displayed the very worst of human abilities.

There was a time when attacking Bush&Co was akin to blasphemy. God on earth could do no wrong. The best of America's young men died and were mangled in mind and body to prove they were serving a false god. Now you cannot get an answer as to when his devotees ceased being Bush cult followers. They could so easily replace the AWOL master with a fraud pseudo-hero.

While they are unable to have real meaning separat...

Most of reading this article - non bushel supporters as advised - have known the truth of this for a long time. To see it articulated so well is an endorsement of our attempts to use reason and intellect against blind faith in one man who displayed the very worst of human abilities.

There was a time when attacking Bush&Co was akin to blasphemy. God on earth could do no wrong. The best of America's young men died and were mangled in mind and body to prove they were serving a false god. Now you cannot get an answer as to when his devotees ceased being Bush cult followers. They could so easily replace the AWOL master with a fraud pseudo-hero.

While they are unable to have real meaning separation of church and state, they will continue repeating the same mistakes.

I'd hope that Obama could achieve one thing, not on wish official list. I'd dearly wish that intellect would make an overdue return to American politics. The elite robbers can only survive while there is a large rump of intellectually challenged manta repeaters hooked on the concept of the 'American Dream' that can never replace hard work and effort required.