Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free by Charles P. Pierce

Author:Charles P. Pierce [Pierce, Charles P.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Current Events, Humor, Social Science, USA, Form - Essays, Popular Culture, Philosophy, Political, Stupidity, General, United States, American, Political Science, Politics, Essays, Political aspects, International Relations, Popular Culture & Media: General Interest, Form
ISBN: 9780767926157
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2010-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

measure. They kept things in the

right places.

IN Derby Line in Vermont, they put

their public library on the ground

floor of the old opera house, cleanly

melding public information and

public entertainment. Curiously,

though, down the middle of the

library runs the border between the

United States and Canada, indicated

by a black line running across the

library floor. (The line was drawn

in the 1970s, after a fire, in order to

demarcate

the

respective

responsibilities of American and

Canadian insurance companies.) If

you want to borrow a book, you go

to the stacks in Stanstead, Quebec,

to find it, and then back to Derby

Line, Vermont, to check it out.

For decades, it was a point of

civic pride for the people in both

towns that they lived right atop one

of the friendliest stretches of one of

the friendliest borders in the world.

People wandered down the tiny,

shady backstreets of the place,

passing back and forth between the

two countries without ever really

noticing. By 2007, though, the Gut

had come to rule in the United

States.

Borders

were

now

dangerous places, shadowy and

perilously permeable at any moment

by international terrorists or illegal

immigrant gardeners, or both.

“They’re proud of their history,” an

official of the Royal Canadian

Mounted Police told the New York

Times. “But because of what

happened on September 11, 2001,

we cannot do nothing. We have to

react when there’s a threat.” The

border authorities in both countries

moved quickly to restrict access

along the side streets in Stanstead

and Derby Line. As part of the plan,

it was proposed that anyone parking

a car outside the library on the

Canadian side might well have to

pass through a port of entry before

walking up the front steps, which

are on the American side.

Of course, all of this brought the

media, which fit Derby Line and

Stanstead into the ongoing market-

tested,

focus-group

national

narrative of terror, adorned with

ominous logos, laden with dark

brooding music, and pitched for six

years by relentless anchorpeople

wearing their looks of geopolitical

concern and their flag pins. “It was

okay,” says Mary Roy, a librarian

in Derby Line, of the town’s sudden

celebrity. “But it was sort of like,

‘Can’t you guys get together and get

it once, because you’re all asking

the same questions?’

“That one night we were on the

seven o’clock news, NBC there,

Brian Williams and, probably at

seven fifteen, we got a telephone

call from a gentleman calling from

Pennsylvania, totally irate that the

government was going to not be

strong on [border security in the

library], and what could he do.

Wasn’t there a blog, or a citizen’s

advocacy group he could join. This

was the most ridiculous thing he’d

ever heard.”

It has not been an easy decade for

libraries. A national network of

libraries had been operated for

decades by the U.S. Environmental

Protection

Agency;

the

Bush

administration closed it, destroying

a number of documents in the

process. The USA Patriot Act,

passed in the immediate aftermath

of the September 11 attacks by a

terrified and docile Congress,

allowed

the

FBI

virtually

untrammeled power to rummage

through the records of library

patrons. Some librarians resisted by

destroying their records before the

Feds could get to them. One

librarian in Massachusetts threw

two FBI agents out of the library

and told them to come back with a

warrant. John Ashcroft, who was

then the U.S. attorney general, pooh-

poohed the privacy concerns of the

librarians, claiming that the Feds

never used their new powers, but

neglecting to mention that the same

law that allowed the FBI to come

snooping in the libraries also

forbade

the

librarians

from

disclosing their visits. Libraries are

well-ordered

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