I don’t always agree with Nicholas Kristof, but he really nails it in this op-ed (via Scarecrow at FireDogLake). I’m having a hard time finding a small portion to snip to give you a taste, because it’s all so good.

Rev. Wright was ridiculed in the press for his (well, ridiculous) belief that AIDS was the US government engaging in biological warfare against blacks. Kristof points out that this sort of thing is not a Rev. Wright problem, nor an African-American problem; it’s an American problem.

… there’s this embarrassing fact about the United States in the 21st century: Americans are as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution. Depending on how the questions are asked, roughly 30 to 40 percent of Americans believe in each.

A 34-nation study found Americans less likely to believe in evolution than citizens of any of the countries polled except Turkey.

President Bush is also the only Western leader I know of who doesn’t believe in evolution, saying “the jury is still out.” No word on whether he believes in little green men.

Only one American in 10 understands radiation, and only one in three has an idea of what DNA does. One in five does know that the Sun orbits the Earth …oh, oops.

“America is now ill with a powerful mutant strain of intertwined ignorance, anti-rationalism, and anti-intellectualism,” Susan Jacoby argues in a new book, “The Age of American Unreason.” She blames a culture of “infotainment,” sound bites, fundamentalist religion and ideological rigidity for impairing thoughtful debate about national policies….

He points out that we are so enamored of our own ignorance that we choose leaders who reflect that ignorance back to us:

From Singapore to Japan, politicians pretend to be smarter and better- educated than they actually are, because intellect is an asset at the polls. In the United States, almost alone among developed countries, politicians pretend to be less worldly and erudite than they are (Bill Clinton was masterful at hiding a brilliant mind behind folksy Arkansas sayings about pigs).

Alas, when a politician has the double disadvantage of obvious intelligence and an elite education and then on top of that tries to educate the public on a complex issue — as Al Gore did about climate change — then that candidate is derided as arrogant and out of touch.

It’s not the ignorance per se that bothers me. No one can be an expert in everything. It’s the willfulness of our ignorance that gets us into trouble. If we feel threatened by knowledge we don’t have–if we resist acknowledging our own ignorance–we can never learn and grow. If we just make shit up, instead of doing the hard work of understanding the roots of complicated and difficult problems, and figuring out workable solutions, then the problems are never solved. This strain of anti-intellectual snobbery threatens to cripple us as a nation. It has to stop. And quite frankly, we need to spend some resources on how to fix this problem.

In the interests of helping my fellow Americans, I’ve begun that process, and I have had an important epiphany. Brace yourselves for a shock. This is not a problem mired in complex socioeconomic rigamarole. No. It’s really quite simple, once you examine the evidence. Susan Jacoby herself tips her hand, when she mentions a “powerful mutant strain” of ignorance.

Clearly, sometime in the past century, psychic alien zombies ate America’s brains. And she’s in on it!

Either that, or malevolent intelligent bacterial super-colonies have hacked their own DNA and infested our water supply, in a struggle for Darwinian supremacy!

Or perhaps it’s giant horned pig lizards… hmm… I know I can figure this out. Give me time.

*shuffles off, mumbling*