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America The Dumb by monty keeling Those who have ears let them here - Jesus A Washington Post opinion column today, Fact-Free News, reported that researchers have released findings, "which go a long way toward explaining why there's so little common ground in American politics today: People are proceeding from radically different sets of facts, some so different that they're altogether fiction." How's this for confusion? Forty-eight percent of Americans believed that the United States had uncovered evidence demonstrating a close working relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Another 22 percent thought that we had found the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And 25 percent said that most people in other countries had backed the U.S. war against Saddam Hussein. Sixty percent of all respondents entertained at least one of these bits of dubious knowledge; 8 percent believed all three. None of these three beliefs is true. Fox news watchers by far make up the largest group of the confused. Probably because Fox news is largely orchestrated around the conservative propaganda preferred by owner Rupert Murdoch. Eighty percent of Fox viewers believed at least one of these un-facts; 45 percent believed all three. Over at CBS, 71 percent of viewers fell for one of these mistakes, but just 15 percent bought into the full trifecta. And in the daintier precincts of PBS viewers and NPR listeners, just 23 percent adhered to one of these misperceptions, while a scant 4 percent entertained all three. When our founding fathers put together the governing structure of this country they choose a representative form of doing business rather than a true form of democracy. In a true democracy everybody directly votes for their choice, in a representative form we vote for people who will do the real voting. Hence the electoral college which may or may not vote the mood of the popular choice for president. The founding fathers created our governing system this way because they didn't think the common folk, many who were uneducated at the time, could be trusted to make the right decisions. We have to believe that 200 years later, with a population in this country that has more average education than most of our nation's founders, those guys would still think they made the right decision. For we remain American the dumb. Not stupid because we have the capacity to learn, but dumb, because like those who can't hear, we can't critically think. And, as the Post article suggest, we are dumb because we seek out only sources of information that reinforce our own world view (or prejudices). A story in today's Ocala New-Banner reports on a series of speakers lined up by the Villages Retirement Community. They include Fox news anchor Tony Snow (as in I'm trying to snow you over?), Art Linkletter, and Oliver North. Nothing against Linkletter but Snow's speech sounded more like Russ Limbaugh's radio show than the address of a man charged with the responsibility of intelligently and objectively providing news information. And Oliver North, in case anyone forgotten, lied to the United States Congress, while decked out in his Marine uniform, about America's involvement in South America. All for a good cause of course. Ok the place is a retirement community and folks should be allowed to be set in their ways at that age. But the recent research shows our whole nation must be retired intellectually. So for those who don't want to be dumb a few suggestions. Always get your new information from at least three different sources. Force one of those sources to be folks you don't agree with. One can be your favorite, and search for a middle of the road third source. Question everything you hear since objectivity in reporting is a thing of the past, and ratings are the news god of the present. And please, stay away from Oliver North. |