From the always sharp Chris Hedges, we are reminded that in this time of incredible technological advancments, America’s doesn’t even know how to read:

There are over 42 million American adults, 20 percent of whom hold high school diplomas, who cannot read, as well as the 50 million who read at a fourth- or fifth-grade level. Nearly a third of the nation’s population is illiterate or barely literate. And their numbers are growing by an estimated 2 million a year. But even those who are supposedly literate retreat in huge numbers into this image-based existence. A third of high school graduates, along with 42 percent of college graduates, never read a book after they finish school. Eighty percent of the families in the United States last year did not buy a book. 

And it’s even transferred up to our leaders.  

The Princeton Review analyzed the transcripts of the Gore-Bush debates, the Clinton-Bush-Perot debates of 1992, the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960 and the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. It reviewed these transcripts using a standard vocabulary test that indicates the minimum educational standard needed for a reader to grasp the text. During the 2000 debates, George W. Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.7) and Al Gore at a seventh-grade level (7.6). In the 1992 debates, Bill Clinton spoke at a seventh-grade level (7.6), while George H.W. Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.8), as did H. Ross Perot (6.3). In the debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, the candidates spoke in language used by 10th-graders. In the debates of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas the scores were respectively 11.2 and 12.0. In short, today’s political rhetoric is designed to be comprehensible to a 10-year-old child or an adult with a sixth-grade reading level. 

So we’ve gone from 12th grade language level down to 7th grade language level from our President’s.  Ouch.  But what does language level actually measure?  Hedges:

It is fitted to this level of comprehension because most Americans speak, think and are entertained at this level. This is why serious film and theater and other serious artistic expression, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of American society. Voltaire was the most famous man of the 18th century. Today the most famous “person” is Mickey Mouse.

Was “serious artistic expression” ever not on the margins of American society?  I’m pretty sure the Jack Kerouac never had a teevee show.  There is an inherent “outsiderness” of artistic expression that needs some sort of agreed upon medium to foil against.  

But what I think Hedges is getting at is that our country’s heavy move into a post-modern culture has made us retarded.  It’s not specifically that we can’t read, it’s more about the dumbing down of society to a point where we are too stupid to know facts from lies.

The core values of our open society, the ability to think for oneself, to draw independent conclusions, to express dissent when judgment and common sense indicate something is wrong, to be self-critical, to challenge authority, to understand historical facts, to separate truth from lies, to advocate for change and to acknowledge that there are other views, different ways of being, that are morally and socially acceptable, are dying. Obama used hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funds to appeal to and manipulate this illiteracy and irrationalism to his advantage, but these forces will prove to be his most deadly nemesis once they collide with the awful reality that awaits us. 

Sometimes I think Hedges is stuck in 2004 when the we believed the lies of Iraq, thought torture was okay, and that the Christian Right was going to to create a religious state.  We just had an election where Ideas won out over Lies.  It seems like we have at least pointed the ship in the right direction now.  Time will tell though.