Can you explain what you mean by “politically unaware”?
The clear evidence of human ignorance and irrationality in the political arena poses a serious challenge to the popular wisdom. Lacking awareness of basic facts of their political systems, to say nothing of the more sophisticated knowledge that would be needed to reliably resolve controversial political issues, most citizens can do no more than guess when they enter the voting booth. . . . [T]he attempt to influence public policy through such arbitrary guesses is unjust and socially irresponsible.
Dayum.
This is one of those, “Tell us what you really think Michael” moments.
Interesting article. I would agree that most Americans are politically unaware per that article, because most Americans aren’t economists or historians. It was definitely an interesting read, but what I really noticed is that the article failed to compare American political unawareness to a global baseline, or at least provide some comparable country’s numbers, like England, France, Russia, China, Australia, Mexico and Canada?
Makes me wonder if I could pass the US citizenship test…
Edit: 95% on a practice test…
There are practice tests you can take . I bet you can pass it.
Passed that one. It was a little harder than the practice test, but I think it’s about a middle-school level difficulty.
Welcome to America! 🇺🇸
Born here, stuck here.
Anyway, how well do you think American political awareness compares to political awareness of other countries? I honestly haven’t looked yet.
Probably similar to other countries, but the stakes are so much higher because of the $2 billion military budget.
Why did the United States enter the Vietnam War?
Not the easiest kind of question to answer with multiple choice…
Is it money, it’s always money 💰
That was my thought too.
The media and social media are geared towards reinforcing tribalism. You have to pick a team and anyone on the other team is your enemy. It works well as a means of driving engagement and making money at the expense of having an electorate that is informed.
It reminds me of the town hall Bernie Sanders did on Fox News a few years ago. If you strip away the partisan blinkers and have a debate based on facts, specific policy points, and focusing on trying to improve people’s lives instead of scoring cheap points then more people agree than disagree, regardless of political affiliation.
I guess the question is, “who benefits from a divided electorate?”
Civics was a single class in highschool.
We need a STEM type push for more civics in highschool and middle school.
Talking heads and a failing education system.
Because they don’t give a fuck.
Constant defunding of public education, anti-intellectualism, and conservative idealism has made this nation as dumb as a bag of hammers. Being highly educated in America kind of feels like you have a superiority complex but it’s also incredibly frustrating at times.
Can I ask how you cope with the frustration? Touching grass isn’t enough lately.
🍄
Trying to survive
Exactly as planned by the reigning political parties.
50 mini countries with poor educational infrastructure exacerbated by the prevalence of not just Fox News, et al, but also AM radio, beholden to a group that fights to keep them uneducated so they don’t rise up and repeat the violence of the 1900s against robber barons.
That about sums it up.
For one, the United States lacks a good press corps of independent journalists with broad reach.
Everything is either politicized or commercialized. Shock value sells. Balanced rational discourse does not. Polarization makes too much money for too many people.
On top of that, a systematic destruction of education and a stranglehold of religion practically makes ignorance inevitable.
Maybe we could repair it, but it would take Republicans being blocked from making any decisions for several decades at this point.
Yeah it’s hard trying to save democracy when a large portion of the country has been brainwashed to destroy it all while thinking they’re the most patriotic.
It’s a catch-22. We can’t fix it, until we fix it.
No no…we had it fixed for centuries, until it was intentionally dismantled over the past 50-70 years (depending on where you wish to place the official start date.) For me, I place it during the 1964 presidential campaign, as that’s the markings of the first ever attack ad.
If you want the public to care about your politics, then politics needs to be about the policies of those politics. Reflection from within. Rather than “but what about the other guy? He’s bad.”
If candidate number one tells you “I will raise taxes, and use the money to pay for schools and roads”. And a second candidate says “I will lower taxes by dismantling social security”. You as a voter then have a choice to make. Pay slightly more in taxes, with better roads, and a better future for the next generation. OR pay less taxes, and probably have your retirement vanish.
Instead, that same scenario today would be “The other guy wants to take your retirement! He’s bad!” and the second candidate says “The other guy is raising taxes. He’s bad!”
So now the general public thinks both candidates are bad, and nobody looks into what the outcome of their other choices have historically been. This then leads them to vote based on sound bytes, rather than historical accuracies.
The end result is nobody cares about politics, because it’s all bullshit anyways.
Username still doesn’t check out.
No no…we had it fixed for centuries
I really don’t understand you there.
No, in fact the very founding of the USA was arguably done primarily so that the ruling class could disregard the respectful boundaries that the English imposed to avoid strife with Native Americans and other colonial powers, which incidentally tended to curb our exploiting the land willy-nilly as we’ve shamelessly done since. It also locked out women and slave voters, preserving a classist system.
Since then there’s been various periods of little / negligible useful social policies, as well as periods in which the ultra-wealthy and common capitalists were UNCHECKED in their ability to thoroughly exploit people and form monopolies, etc etc. Seriously, if the Roosevelts hadn’t come along, those things might have progressed scarily unchecked.
So, no-- I certainly don’t see evidence that our form of democracy was ‘fixed for centuries.’ No, the fact is it’s been a shaky, wild, perilous ride from the day one.
…the 1964 presidential campaign, as that’s the markings of the first ever attack ad.
Maybe in terms of TV, but TV is just a natural extension of media, and media in the States has been used since… at least the early 1800’s? to completely slag-off or outright attack enemy candidates. Indeed, it’s been a perfect blood-bath of disinformation at times, which doesn’t even address all the nasty, vile tricks used to disenfranchise, or outright turn away undesirable voters at the polls. Which yes-- includes outright violence against undesirable voters across centuries in the States.
So, yeah… that all happened.
Altho I DO agree with you that somewhere between 50-70yrs back, the USA has been outright under attack by right-wingers, paving the way for fascism. Basically attacking most of the progress made under FDR and even Republican presidents like Ike.
I’m still amazed judges are so clearly divided into groups. I consider being a judge to require a degree of impartiality and authority that anyone clearly identifying as democratic or republican should be disqualified for. Democratic perhaps not since their more centric than left leaning or far left :/. Point being the one occupation that mandates impartiality is highly politicised. Of course everything is f*cked. The rule of law is not dictated by the majority or enforced by the trustworthy.
Many reasons. Regular politics is boring, and pop culture Facebook TikTok YouTube is all so much more captivating.
Also, so many Americans are struggling to survive, so there isn’t enough time to engage with the political process in a meaningful way. I wonder if it’s an intentional effort by the uber wealthy.
How could we make politics fun for a wider audience?
Put a clown in the race that says outrageous things and the media can’t get enough of.
Inconvenient coincidence or grand plan, either way, its a crystal clear indicator that the whole constitution needs a rewrite.
I feel like that may be the closest unifying political opinion, which we need… We can hash out the details Constitutional Convention style after we get rid of the muck…
Lots of great answers here.
I think one under mentioned cause is the effect of social media algorithms.
All major social media platforms use machine learning algorithms decide what to show in your feed. The algorithms are programmed to show you the things that have historically kept you on the site longer.
It’s human nature to upvote/read/support/engage with the things that agree with our world views, and downvote/dismiss/disengage/discredit the things that disagree with our worldview.
These two facts combined result in you seeing more of the content that aligns with your worldview, and more of the content from people who share your worldview. We’re all funnelled into communities of like minded individuals that repeat what we already believe, reinforcing whatever that is regardless of how factually correct it might be.
Dissenting information that might cause you to reconsider your position or become more politically aware is automatically filtered out.
And it’s not just social media either, even the algorithms behind search engines display this behaviour.
Long before social media existed, Google was tailoring search results to match the things you tend to click on. If you searched for news and typically clicked on the headlines biased towards one side or the other Google would start ranking site with that bias higher.
This wasn’t intentional (at least not originally) it was just a side effect of the algorithm, trying to figure out what you were most likely looking for.
For someone who, for example, believes the Earth is flat. If they were to type “is the Earth flat?” Into a search engine. They are much more likely to get results that “prove” the Earth is flat, then a person who believes the Earth is round, because the algorithm knows that they tend to click on articles that “confirm” the earth is flat.
Algorithms used by social media and search engines today, make it genuinely difficult to maintain a balanced worldview and find unbiased answers to any question. They are all designed to keep you engaged, And it is human nature to engage more with the things we agree with, regardless of truth.
Cos that’s the way the elite want it, an ignorant population it’s easier to manipulate.
"There’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education SUCKS, and it’s the same reason it will never, ever, EVER be fixed.
It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got.
Because the owners, the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the BIG owners! The Wealthy… the REAL owners! The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.
Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice! You have OWNERS! They OWN YOU. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls.
They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want:
They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. Thats against their interests.
Thats right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that!
You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fucking place! It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it! You, and I, are not in the big club.
By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care! Good honest hard-working people; white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means, continue to elect these rich cock suckers who don’t give a fuck about you…. they don’t give a fuck about you… they don’t give a FUCK about you.
They don’t care about you at all… at all… AT ALL. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Thats what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth.
It’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it."
George Carlin?
I mean…yes?
Not everyone has it memorized, so it was good to have confirmation :)
It looked like a F##k fest so I decided imma go live in my tiny bubble of happiness.
Not like I need more drama and negativity because some old people who know nothing but to never answer your questions with a straightforward answer, tell me what I need to think or do.
I rather go download some ISOs and mess around on different linux distros.
One argument I don’t think anyone else has made here - we have fewer restrictions on what can be advertised, where and when ads can be played, and how close to true those advertisements have to be than a lot of other countries do. I think this has the effect of wearing down people’s ability and willingness to engage in logical analysis of the information they receive because we’re constantly bombarded with information and most of it is bullshit to sell us crap we don’t need, so we have to skim through and tune out a lot, and in that process I think a lot of information that’s actually true but that people don’t want to believe gets thrown out too.
Mostly willful ignorance. They don’t want to be aware and so are not aware.
At the same time they’ll complain it’s too hard to follow and on the other hand go into great detail about their NCAA Men’s Basketball March Madness bracket.
