We're all idiots now

You would be surprised at how much email is sent to me telling me to stop being so derisive, that harsh language and ridicule turn people off and repel the very ones we're trying to persuade. My reply is like the one above; by refusing to ridicule the ridiculous, by watering down every criticism into a mannered circumlocution, we have created an environment where idiots thrive unchallenged. We have a twit for a president because so many people made apologies for his ludicrous lack of qualifications -- we need more people unabashedly pointing out fools.

I've been motivated by this entry from Pharyngula.

The piece may be called 'Idiot America', and I don't know what it's like in the rest of the world, but there are depressing signs here in the UK that the same anti-intellectual, anti-expertise mentality may be starting to take hold. Our media is, in general, not much better at reporting controversial truths than the (dire) US news media and regularly discards verifiable fact in favour of some notion of 'balance', creating arguments where none should be. And though we can pride ourselves, to some extent, on the broadsheets and Channel 4 News and Horizon and Robert Winston and Richard Dawkins and Ben Goldacre and, hell, even the current Archbishop of Canterbury, I think the UK is actually fairly precariously balanced at the moment, and it would not take much to send Britain toppling off into the fantasy headspace inhabited by the US, where global warming is a myth espoused by fringe scientists, scientific conclusions are rewritten to fit political agendas, medical research is a good thing unless it's labelled 'playing god', and theology is taught in physics lessons with little indication of how the two are different.

I think I'm going to have to resurrect tsif.org. We need more people unabashedly pointing out fools.