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January 25, 2014 10:00 pm GMT
Let’s face it: a disturbingly large portion of the American electorate are not-so-knowledgableabout their world. As of 2008, 30% still maintain that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and 18% think the sun revolves around the earth. So, when our friends in the press ran headlines about how most Americans had heard “nothing at all” about President Obama’s recent surveillance reforms, I would have been surprised by exactly the opposite. Let’s take a trip down the rabbit hole of America’s civic knowledge and whether it matters to a functioning democratic state. Most Americans Haven’t Heard Of [Insert Issue Here] Pew surveys released fresh stats about the number of Americans who approve of the National Security Agency’s dragnet program, along with a pie chart showing that 50% had heard “nothing at all” about President Obama’s proposed reforms. To political pollsters, results like this would be a regular Tuesday. Indeed, it was almost embarrassingly easy to find the exact same results for any given issue. –Fewer than 25% of Californians knew “much at all” about the massive healthcare overhaul, the Affordable Care Act, that impacts every single American. –Fewer than half of parents with children in public schools knew anything about the Common Core Standards, arguably one of the most radical overhauls of education in at least 50 years. –A measly 39% of Republicans who think the 2012 attacks on an embassy in Benghazi was the “biggest political scandal in American history” could identify that event took place in a country called Libya. –For kicks, 41% of Americans cannot ID their folksy deputy commander-in-chief, Vice President Joe Biden Polls Get More Disturbing/Hilarious In truth, polls may be radically overestimating Americans’ knowledge. Respondents are known to offer strong feelings for policies that do not actually exist. To test the extremes of this fact in the most disturbing/hilarious possible fashion, I conducted a national poll to see how Americans thought about military intervention in an imaginary country. This was around the time when the president was debating forceful humanitarian intervention in Syria. A whopping 63% of Americans polled had an opinion, either for or against, helping out the good people of “Guavastan”. Guavastan, not yet an actual place, is a luxury island I hope to inhabit after striking it rich in the field of journalism. Some folks got our little joke. One respondent quipped, “guavastan…is that near papaya ville”. Others just had
Original Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/RLFgylOhMsw/
Most Americans Are Unaware Of [Insert Issue Here]
Let’s face it: a disturbingly large portion of the American electorate are not-so-knowledgableabout their world. As of 2008, 30% still maintain that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and 18% think the sun revolves around the earth. So, when our friends in the press ran headlines about how most Americans had heard “nothing at all” about President Obama’s recent surveillance reforms, I would have been surprised by exactly the opposite. Let’s take a trip down the rabbit hole of America’s civic knowledge and whether it matters to a functioning democratic state. Most Americans Haven’t Heard Of [Insert Issue Here] Pew surveys released fresh stats about the number of Americans who approve of the National Security Agency’s dragnet program, along with a pie chart showing that 50% had heard “nothing at all” about President Obama’s proposed reforms. To political pollsters, results like this would be a regular Tuesday. Indeed, it was almost embarrassingly easy to find the exact same results for any given issue. –Fewer than 25% of Californians knew “much at all” about the massive healthcare overhaul, the Affordable Care Act, that impacts every single American. –Fewer than half of parents with children in public schools knew anything about the Common Core Standards, arguably one of the most radical overhauls of education in at least 50 years. –A measly 39% of Republicans who think the 2012 attacks on an embassy in Benghazi was the “biggest political scandal in American history” could identify that event took place in a country called Libya. –For kicks, 41% of Americans cannot ID their folksy deputy commander-in-chief, Vice President Joe Biden Polls Get More Disturbing/Hilarious In truth, polls may be radically overestimating Americans’ knowledge. Respondents are known to offer strong feelings for policies that do not actually exist. To test the extremes of this fact in the most disturbing/hilarious possible fashion, I conducted a national poll to see how Americans thought about military intervention in an imaginary country. This was around the time when the president was debating forceful humanitarian intervention in Syria. A whopping 63% of Americans polled had an opinion, either for or against, helping out the good people of “Guavastan”. Guavastan, not yet an actual place, is a luxury island I hope to inhabit after striking it rich in the field of journalism. Some folks got our little joke. One respondent quipped, “guavastan…is that near papaya ville”. Others just hadOriginal Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/RLFgylOhMsw/
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