Profiles In Ignorance: How America's Politicians Got Dumb And Dumber By Andy Borowitz

Andy Borowitz is a political humorist in the great American tradition of Artemus Ward, Finley Peter Dunne, and Jon Stewart and company. Profiles in Ignorance is a seriously funny book, tracing our descent from ridiculing ignorance in our politicians to accepting it and finally to celebrating it. Of course, there has been a current of anti-intellectualism in American culture for several centuries. As Borowitz puts it, "ignorance in America has had kind of a running start." But our present situation is qualitatively different.

The book's major argument starts by puncturing the hot air balloon around Ronald Reagan and ends by tracing the rise of Donald Trump, providing hilarious quotations along the way from Dan Quayle, Sarah Palin, and many more. Borowitz's own comments add to the fun. For example, he writes, "When Quayle didn't know something, we knew he didn't know …….He kept riffing, nonsensically, believing he was circling the facts when he was only circling the drain." Or of Bush Jr. who, when asked about his favorite childhood book, couldn't remember any but later managed to name The Very Hungry Caterpillar. "Though that book might have been his favorite, it was published a year after he graduated from Yale." Or "Trump steamrolled his fellow reality show contestants in the Republican primary, including the Tea Party gasbag Ted Cruz and Jeb 'Please Clap' Bush (whose candidacy failed to capitalize on America's nostalgia for the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina)."

Even if you voted for Trump, you would have to laugh at some of this. Every single quotation is documented; there are hundreds of notes and even an index in the book. But Borowitz's message is also serious if you value intelligence and knowledge in our elected representatives. He ends the book with a plea for us to stop being political hobbyists who follow all the news on various media without doing anything about what's happening. He urges us to work on our local level, to register voters, to get out the vote, to go to town meetings, and to move people away from false news and ignorant beliefs by talking with them patiently one at a time.