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Audacity of Truth
Rock the Ignorant Vote
If this doesn’t make you want to scream first thing this morning, then nothing will.
Hint: It’s reminiscent of the Howard Stern audio clip where one of his staffers did “man on the street” interviews with people who supported Barack Obama who clearly knew nothing about either of the nominees for president.
Exit question: How do we change this? Stories like this one are extremely frustrating, because there are so many out there, including bloggers, pundits, authors, informed readers, and the rare reporter (usually on Fox News) who write and/or talk about the issues daily in an effort to help people make informed decisions. Yet there is a not so small percentage of people in this country wh don’t bother to get themselves informed because they are supposedly “too busy. Either that, or they rely on misleading information sources that don’t advance the debate due to the fact that those sources don’t aid in educating the reader/listener.
What can you do?
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After the 1964 blowout loss by the GOP, there was an interview with an elderly woman who had always voted Republican. The story was that for the first time in her life she voted for a Democrat for president. When questioned about her change of heart, she said they she could not vote for Goldwater because he planned to take away her television. It seems that she had confused “TV” with “TVA”, which is short for Tennessee Valley Authority. The TVA was a pricey boondoggle Goldwater had promised to end.
Nearly half a century later – in the so-called Information Age – we have large numbers of voters who actually believe that Jon Stewart and his The Daily Show is serious news. Such a country is ripe for dictatorship.
Email this clip to every MSM news organization and add the comment….
“YOUR MANIPULATION OF TRUTH HAS LED TO YOUR IRRELEVANCE.”
I saw the “Media Malpractice … How Obama Got Elected” trailer this morning and just shook my head. For the past couple of weeks I’ve been trying to get rid of some of the stress and anger that’s been controlling my emotions, but it’s been difficult. Your last line really caught my eye: What can you do?
For about a year I’ve been researching, reading, educating myself on “the other side of the story” because I don’t agree with any of Obama’s policies and it was evident the mainstream media was in the tank for Obama. I forwarded I’m guessing more than 500 e-mails to friends and family with articles and comments by my favorite bloggers/journalists, always giving credit to the writer. What’s disturbing is that some of my so-called friends turned on me with not-so-nice responses, either because they accused me of being hateful or they didn’t have time to read my e-mails. Gotta love the “delete” button, huh? Good news is that some did respond with a “thank-you”.
To this day I have yet to find one Liberal/Democrat who can explain to me why Obama is the right president for our country at this time. The conversation ALWAYS turns ugly and somehow I am labeled as a racist. So to listen to the video clip only confirms in my mind that Obama is the most brilliant politician ever, too many in this country don’t have a clue what’s going on and what’s about to happen to them and the “change” they’re hoping for is going to “rock their world”!
God bless our troops, their families and loved ones and God bless America!
I am afraid this is the price you pay for democracy. Throughout the history of democratic states a very large proportion of those who could vote did so on inadequate information, according to some obscure prejudice and just the way they happen to feel. Or they might work out some complicated reason for voting the way they do (we get a good deal of tactical voting in this country) on entirely spurious grounds. This does not mean the country is ripe for dictatorship. After all, all those idiotic votes against Goldwater did not result in a dictatorship. Why should this considerably closer result do so? (If there are moves towards it as some people seem to believe, that will not be because of voters’ stupidity.) You just have to accept it and try and ensure that enough people vote on the basis of some knowledge.
It’s the curse of democracy: universal suffrage comes with a warning label that reads “Most voters will be too lazy to do their homework.”
Several people have posted comments here in the past about the general ignorance of the average voter and how it would benefit the nation to require every voter to pass some sort of basic test on general knowledge of civics, economic, and current issues before being allowed to vote. This just underscores the need.
MD says:
Very true. Brings to mind Benjamin Franklin’s comment after the Constitutional convention, when asked what kind of government we would have: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
A population that has no clue about the candidates or the issues is not one that is well placed to keep good representative government.
This is a true indictment of the drive by media. They purposely have kept the electorate ignorant, and the proof is in the pudding. The Pravda media will only take it’s orders from the Left, and soon we will be coronating the result of their work. Scripture clearly says “My People Perish from a lack of knowledge”, and these people are ripe for take over by a dictator. It was a stupid electorate that elected Hitler or Chavez or …. Pick the dictator. They are more concerned with Brittney Spears than with what their own congressional representative is doing and voting on. Obama ran like Reagan, talking about hope and change, but I am more certain than ever, he is just another DC insider, and with the state media in his pocket, he is going to do some very bad things. – Lorica
The operative question here was “What can you do?” Since, out here on the Unicorn Farm
, it’s just not enough to complain — we might b*tch and share it with everyone, but in the end we do something about it — here are my suggestions.
1. Bring back civics lessons in school. One of the reasons people can’t seem to get excited about finding anything out about their candidates is because they’re fuzzy, at best, about what the function(s) of those governmental position(s) really are. Face it, why would anyone get excited about voting in this day and age unless it was the fashionable thing to do?
2. Teach logic and didactics. Makes seeing through specious arguments a lot easier.
3. Morality and ethics start at home. Leave them there. Legislating such things has proven to be absolutely Orwellian in the end.
4. Let Darwinism take its course. He was right after all, you know.
Just a start.
Look, I haven’t listened to howard stern since high school, I’m not going to start now. But you would expect Howard Stern to go out of his way to find the dumbest individuals they can find. They’ve been doing this same gag for 15 years (consequently, the same gag has also been used by the Daily Show, the Tonight Show & the Late Show).
Are there stupid people who voted Obama. Certainly. Are there stupid people who voted McCain. Definately. Are there more stupid people who voted Obama. I would agree with that. Statistically speaking, the person who receives more votes is going to have more votes from uninformed voters as well.
What ever happened to people checking things out for themselves??? I just shake my head at the complete craziness of people voting and not realizing who they voted for, and all of us pay the price, yikes..
I am terrified.. absolutley terrified.
That video is so real it is scary.. and these people put Obama in the White House..
Please help us! I guess you better get right before you get left!! AHHHHHHHHHH
Absolutely unbelievable. The dumbing down of America is complete.
Personally, I think you should have to pass an IQ test in order to vote. If you’re so stupid that you think Jon Stewart and Bill Maher are news, or the New York Times and CNN for that matter, you’re officially to dumb to make decisions concerning the direction of our nation.
Whatever you have to tell yourself, Alchemist, we understand.
God help us all.
LOL..I actually did the whole “Howard Stern” thing in my PUBLIC SCHOOL CLASS (how do you like THEM apples?) in inner city Compton, CA. It went pretty well and I think it made my students pause.
My take on “what to do:” engage, engage, engage. The more conservatives and evangelicals engage, the better. Not just ask “hey, what’s your view?” and then fawn about “isn’t it nice? I’m ok, you’re ok pal!” We really have to dig deep at a worldview level.
This means equipping ourselves and becoming educated (not just the “university degree” type) so we can be effective engagers.
From there: socratic questioning. Well put questions can stop someone in their tracks. Even if they keep a straight face and maintain their view in front of you, they just might think about it later on. I think engaging socratically is more effective than directly giving your argument monologue fashion.
Alchemist, as usual, rationalizes anything that works to the advantage of his hero:
You might want to take a closer look at the HowObamaGotElected web site. What you’ll learn there is that the video there (the same one Hot Air linked) showed a set of typical Obama voters at one polling site, and they’re equally clueless.
Now, you can argue again that the video producers cherry-picked the dumbest ones available for their film. But what you can not dispute is the accompanying Zogby poll of 512 Obama voters. That is not a sample chosen for stupidity. Given a dozen simple questions – most of which you see in the video clip – more than half didn’t know the Democrats run Congress and almost 90% didn’t know that Obama admitted his policies would make energy prices skyrocket. But almost all of them knew Sarah Palin’s daughter is pregnant. And less than 1% got all the questions right.
Of course, there are those like you who bury their heads in the sand and turn logic on its head to justify a partisan vote even though they know the facts. But I wonder how many of those dimbulb voters would have changed their vote if the MSM spent as much time discussing trivialities like Obama’s energy policy as they did investigating the earth-shaking news of Palin’s daughter being pregnant.
GWR: 1) I have typically said I don’t trust polls with less than 1,000 participants
2) There’s nothing to contrast that level of stupidity with. Give 500 random McCain voters the same test, and see how they do. If there’s a significant difference, than we can talk. (Still, I’d prefer several thousand to be even remotely accurate)
3) 538 (a website run by a statistics expert) has already given a list of problems with the poll. I would link, but can’t open the site at work (for some strange reason?).
Alchemist the number of those polled is, in this case quite irrelevant, as indicated by one of the largest polls taken in history. It was called a National Election but as GWR said,
I don’t actually believe that you or anyone with their faculties intact, can ignore that and the historically long laundry list of inanities associated with the *O* and have any credibility left, whatsoever.
Clueless is what they’ve (mediabots and their anti-America allies in the tank for *O*) strived for and attained…..fool speed ahead! There’s no time for facts, when the narrative drums must beaten like some kind of galley slave. Row damnit! Row!!!
Alchemist, I read 538’s criticism of the Zogby poll. Two major problems with 538:
First, they claim this qualifies as a “push poll”. Zogby’s response to this is simple: push polls are designed to influence a vote, but this was taken after the vote. If this poll were taken on November 1, you might have a point. You might want to explain how a poll taken after the election can influence the outcome.
Second, they tip their partisan hand by claiming that there’s dispute over the truth of the questions – such as saying it’s not proven that Obama made his statement about energy prices, or that Obama got opponents kicked off the ballot in his first election. By now, those are undisputed facts – to everyone except those such as 538 or you who, as I said before, willingly bury their heads in the sand to avoid unpleasant facts.
As for comparing what the results would be if you gave the same questions to McCain voters, let me say plainly: they’d do better.
Here’s my reasoning: most of the questions fall into two categories: negative news about the GOP (McCain not knowing how many houses he owns, Palin’s pregnant daughter) and negative news about the Dems (Obama’s energy plan, Biden’s plagiarism).
The Obama voters recorded very high scores on the former, but so would the McCain voters – because the MSM spent months on its jihad to make sure everyone knew them. So those questions are essentially a wash.
The difference will come in the other questions. Obama voters scored very low here – for example, only 11% correct on the energy question, when simple random guessing should have provided 25% correct answers. I’m thinking that most of the Obama voters, never having heard these facts (what with the MSM near-blackout on them) reflexively attributed anything negative to McCain or Palin. In support of that, I point to the video clip…look at the one woman, who, having no idea on a couple of those questions, mumbled “Sounds like something Palin would do”.
Let’s assume the McCain voters are equally uninformed, but are also equally likely to pin anything negative on Obama or Biden. They’d score much higher on those questions. Therefore, the McCain voters’ overall score would be much higher.
Does this prove the average McCain voter knew more than the Obama voter? Not conclusively. But that wasn’t the point of the poll. The point was that the MSM did an extremely poor job of balancing its coverage, to the point where Obama owes much of his vote to a tsunami of ignorance.
Sorry, you’re right, the 538 report doesn’t say exactly what I’m trying to say. Sorry, couldn’t check at work and I remember it being different. Let me go about this a different way: After reading through the initial poll questionnaire, I would expect republicans to do better on this ‘poll’ than democrats.
Why? Because they’re RNC talking points. They’re issues that die-hard RNC-supporters tend to feel we’re important to the election, and many americans felt were not germane to the election. IE Ayers/Wright/ Is Obama a socialist? Did they know the exact answers, probably not. But the information was out there (if they wanted to find it). Ayers was certainly in the news for more than a week, if viewers were curious, it’s not like more information was difficult to find (just watch Fox).
But most found the information bunk, and didn’t listen to the details. Now, if you compared actual policy proposals between the two candidates I would expect you would have a more even breakdown of knowledge between Obama/McCain supporters. (you know, the things media is SUPPOSED to cover).
Alchemist, do you practice being this dense, or does it come naturally? Really! Did you miss the part where the entire purpose of the poll was to gauge
So if some of the poll questions were just “RNC talking points”, and if the MSM did its job, then the Obama voters should have known those questions just as well as the DNC talking points that masqueraded as the other questions. But they didn’t, which means either the Obama voters really ARE weapons-grade dumb, or the MSM biased its coverage. I vote for the latter, although I’m beginning to wonder…..
Also, since when have Obama and Biden taken to writing “RNC talking points”? Are you seriously trying to say that Obama didn’t say there were 57 states, or that he said it just to feed ammo to the RNC? Was Biden’s statement that Obama will face an international crisis by the summer of 2009 a fiendish Karl Rove plot? What eeeevil Republican genius forced Obama to say his energy plan will make prices skyrocket? See, the Obama voters didn’t know these precisely because the media did its best to spike the stories.
This is my last contribution to this thread. If you can’t – or won’t – understand by now, you never will.
Give him a couple of years, GWR. Then he’ll understand it. So will millions of others.
The RNC spent an election trying to win by Ayers-type attacks on Obama. Obama parried and deflected them. Most americans were uninterested (it’s not like FOX didn’t play these stories 24 hours a day). If voters were curious they could find them. I don’t know about you, but I got 10-12 e-mails with much worse stuff than printed here… rumors that didn’t even make the blog circuit. American’s simply didn’t care. And seriously, you’re going to blame THE MEDIA for people not knowing who owns congress? Really? Do you think this was never covered?
And yes, I have wholeheartedly agreed that media has become to interested in celebrity gossip and gone away from it’s duties (again, my example is FOX news).
In the end, it doesn’t matter if the world or media is “fair” such a thing does not exist. It only matters which campaign rises above their defficiences. In 5 of the last 7 campaigns, republicans were far superior to this. In this election, they weren’t. If McCain had stopped whining about bias for two minutes and done a better job of his explaining his candidcy, he might have won (hell, he might even have won my vote). You can’t wait for “fair coverage”, you have to make your own. Welcome to the history of politics in America.
Whine or actually solve your problems. These are really your options for the future.
(And the 57 state thing I chalked up to a simple speaking error, the same way I ignored McCain’s Iraq/Afghanistan border slip, or the Shia/Sunni confusion).