A muscle atrophies if it is not used. Similarly, a mind becomes lazy if it is not well fed. And a weak mind dumbs-down our politics. We elect people we come to dislike because too many of us require no more of them than we require of ourselves. We then wonder why little seems to work and the country soon suffers.

Evidence of the dumbing-down of America is everywhere. Some of it is chronicled in a new book, Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and the Everyman Elevated America by Daniel J. Flynn.

Flynn contends popular culture has divorced itself from the life of the mind. He has plenty of examples in case television, texting, video games, and improper use of English (”she was like and then I was like”) are not enough.

Flynn calls the digital age that has sped up the process by which we receive information “Idiotville,” because it has made us less intelligent.

“Stupid is the new smart,” writes Flynn. He says we arrived at this lower level of brain activity because as recently as the last century “the everyman aspired to high culture and … intellectuals descended from the ivory tower to speak to the everyman.” Today, he says, “Those who pursue the life of the mind have insulated themselves from popular culture. Speaking in insider jargon and writing unread books, intellectuals have locked themselves away in a ghetto of their own creation.”

That has left the nonintellectual class to fend for itself. One library in Portland, Maine, rather than leading, is being led by the unformed teenage mind. “Video gaming is just a new form of literacy,” says the “teen librarian.” If so, what’s the new form of illiteracy, ignorance about how to use a joystick?

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