Studies Show that the U.S. is a Nation of Fools in terms of Political Comprehension

AuH20

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Clueless and proud of it.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspi...about-during-election-season-voter-ignorance/


On Tuesday, we will have an important election that determines which party controls the House and Senate. Yet most Americans have very little understanding of the issues they will soon decide at the polls. A recent Annenberg Public Policy Center poll finds that only 38% of Americans know that the Republican Party currently controls the House of Representatives, and a similar number know that the Democrats control the Senate.

Despite years of public controversy over the budget, surveys consistently show that most of the public have very little understanding of how the federal government spends its money. They greatly underestimate the percentage of federal funds allocated to massive entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security—which are among the largest federal expenditures—and vastly overestimate the proportion that goes to foreign aid (only about 1 percent of the total). Voters are also often ignorant about the basic structure of government. The Annenberg survey found that only 36% of Americans can name the three branches of the federal government: the executive, legislative and judicial.

Political ignorance is not caused by lack of information. Thanks to the internet, information is easier to find than ever. Yet studies show that today’s voters are about as ignorant as those of the pre-internet era. Most of such ignorance is actually rational. When your only incentive to acquire political knowledge is to make better voting decisions, remaining ignorant makes good sense. No matter how well-informed you are, the probability that your vote will change the outcome of an election is tiny—only one in 60 million in a presidential election, for example. Though few know the exact odds, people have an intuitive sense that there is little payoff to studying political issues, and act accordingly.

If you can't name the 3 branches of government, you shouldn't be able to vote. Letting such an uninformed idiot vote would be akin to hiring a mechanic who can't pop the hood of a car.
 
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Subversion... Not overnight 'Cloak -n- Dagger' but generational, gradual subversion.

Former Bombay KGB station chief, Yuri Bezmenov aka Tomas D. Schuman, "The Socialists are the useful idiots of the Marxists"
 
I don't need a study to know that.

Though it always helps to have the numbers to back up what one already knows...
 
I don't need a study to know that.

Though it always helps to have the numbers to back up what one already knows...

It's actually worse than we thought. I thought the numbers would be actually higher. I'm embarrassed to be human.
 
It's actually worse than we thought. I thought the numbers would be actually higher. I'm embarrassed to be human.

"We".

I'm usually optimistic about most things but I have talked to so many people about politics and heard so many downright stupid things said that it doesn't surprise me one bit. Though I will admit... somewhere in my heart I hoped that I was the one being stupid and that there were more people who were at least slightly politically aware.

That's not the case though. I don't even count myself among the most informed people, there's still so much I don't know about politics or incidents that I'm unaware of, yet I can school your average person on politics. That should not be.
 
Politics and it's importance has been almost but obliterated from the Common Core curriculum, which is why it's so important to act now before they take over the internet too.
 
Subversion... Not overnight 'Cloak -n- Dagger' but generational, gradual subversion.

Former Bombay KGB station chief, Yuri Bezmenov aka Tomas D. Schuman, "The Socialists are the useful idiots of the Marxists"

The children of this country have been trained to emotionally process problems instead of logically. Just examine the angle of many of these so-called political ads. They are all emotionally geared without any real substantive thought behind them. If you're a thinking man these days, you're simply out of your depth with the current voting populace, unless of course you can gin up a highly moving emotional subject to run upon. Just examine the democrats' obsession with the war on women & other such nonsense. They have extracted an incredible amount of political mileage from this contrived circus.
 
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This would be appropriate here too:

People are good at voting. They can choose between two options with absolutely no knowledge whatsoever.

Seriously, the most impact an individual voter has is in local elections, but people have no clue as to who to vote for, and they are more than happy to make a choice!

Do you vote for School Board members? Do you know which candidates support or oppose Common Core? Do you know if any of them even care?

Do you vote for Judges? Do you know their records? Do you know if there are any controversies surrounding them?

Is there an important issue in your city? Do you know where City Council candidates stand on those issues?

The Voting Guide is usually no help. It is nothing more than a list of names and candidate statements which often avoid issues.

But voters are more than willing to check the boxes...
 
The children of this country have been trained to emotionally process problems instead of logically. Just examine the angle of many of these so-called political ads. They are all emotionally geared without any real substantive thought behind them. If you're a thinking man these days, you're simply out of your depth with the current voting populace, unless of course you can gin up a highly moving emotional subject to run upon. Just examine the democrats' obsession with the war on women & other such nonsense. They have extracted an incredible amount of political mileage from this contrived circus.
Fur Shore... One can go on any social media venue and counter some progressive failure and you get battered with emotion and the left-right false dichotomy substance.
 
The people don't have the slightest clue about what the government is doing. This has always been the case and always will be the case.

If the people do not know what the government is doing, then obviously they are not controlling what the government is doing.

One cannot operate a machine which one does not know how to operate.

But someone's controlling the government, someone is directing the machine, and democracy is truly the rule of those individuals, not the voters.

Who are they?

At the first step, they are the politicians. They, not the voters who elect them, determine government policy.

The voters determine which politicians take power, but they do not choose between politicians on the basis of policy.

Voters choose between politicians on the basis of rhetoric.

Thus, in a democracy, the policies which are actually implemented are those of the most skilled demagogues, not those desired by voters.

(N.B. It's not that the policies implemented are contrary to those desired by voters, it's that the voters do not have any preference, because they don't know what's actually happening or what the actual alternatives are).

But the deviousness of the brain of the politician is not the only factor determining his success as a demagogue.

Successful demagoguery, especially in a larger society, requires substantial material resources: to physically communicate the rhetoric.

Moreover, since the audience of this rhetoric is ignorant and intellectually unsophisticated, the quality of the rhetoric need not be very high.

There's no need for a Cicero (who would I suspect lose his primary if he ran today), all we need is a George W. Bush.

The content and style of the rhetoric can be mechanically put together by the science of public relations (reminiscent of Orwell's novel writing machines); there is no need for a rare oratorical genius.

The effectiveness of the rhetoric is determined by money: whoever has the money to hire the best public relations men and purchase the most advertizing.

Thus, the politicians are more dispensable than their donors. For every Sheldon Adelson there are a thousand Newt Gingriches.

consequently, the donors not only have a role in determining policy, they have the dominant role. Politicians are in essence their employees.

So then, democracy is neither rule of the people, nor rule of the demagogues, it is plutocracy.

Stranegly enough, this is almost universally recognized. People know that money controls politics. Yet they don't understand the argument I just laid out, and they don't realize that this is an inherent feature of democracy, rather than an aberration. They mistakenly think the problem can be solved through some clever new campaign finance reform.

P.S. In the popular mind, plutocracy = capitalism. Surely the rich want free markets and low taxes? But of course that's false. Humanitarians, who care about society as a whole, and who understand economics, want capitalism. Rich people, if they are purely self-interested, as are most people in general, the rich being no exception - do not. They want protectionism, subsidies, favorable regulations, legal monopolies, etc. As for taxes, they certainly want low taxes for themselves, but they need high taxes in general to finance all the self-aggrandizing government policies they favor.

P.P.S. Don't misunderstand me, this is not a lament about the futility of political action. To the contrary, understanding how the system actually works is a prerequisite for successful political action. The lesson is this. Education can only go so far; there's a large segment of the population who cannot be reached at the rational level. The purpose of education is to produce a cadre of true believers, who can lead the movement. The path to success for the movement is to play the demagoguery game (as Rand is playing). We will never have the money of our opponents, so we have to spend our resources more wisely. It's an uphill battle but it's far from hopeless.
 
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I don't think the people who are that ignorant are a majority of the voting population.
 
What we need is another Will Rogers...

"Come on now, Henry. You know that nobody with any sense ever took any of my gags seriously."--Will Rogers

"They are taken seriously by nobody except half-wits; in other words, by approximately 85 percent of the voting population."--H.L. Mencken

...quick before they start censoring the internet.
 
And the votes of the fools all count just the same. (Is this a great system or what?)


The best argument against democracy is a 5 minute conversation with the average voter.

+rep. I doubt I'd ever get my way, but if I had my 'druthers, getting a voter ID would require an exam covering at least the basics of civics, US history, and econ.
 
What we need is another Will Rogers...



...quick before they start censoring the internet.

How popular was Mr Will Rogers during his lifetime? He's well before my time. I think his wit and wisdom would be lost on most people toady, especially those ~40 and younger.
 
Oh c'mon, this is no big deal, you just need to vote harder.

Seriously, this is no surprise, it's amazing how many people are really just high functioning idiots.
 
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