I never get enough of this stuff.
It’s OK for people to be stupid, but they really shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Americans Are Not Stupid
Ted Rall
http://rall.comTed Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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18 Comments.
Americans can be forgiven for not knowing what al-Qaida is, because it's a different thing from one week to the next.
The best answer to that question is, al-Qaida is nothing but one big fat excuse to do whatever Bush (and now Obama)wants to do–whether invade other countries, or take away our rights.
I am truly ashamed to be an American.
This sort of thing is always unfair because you know they as dozens of people these questions and only show the ones who get the wrong, or in some cases, funny answers.
Especially Obama voters:
http://www.howobamagotelected.com/
Yes. Perhaps we should enact a . . . oh I don't know . . . a poll tax or something to allow only those we deem capable to vote.
I just got back from traveling abroad for a month. The first thing I noticed was that Americans are also not fat…
I do not think this is a reliable
indicator. You can keep asking
questions and only select the dumbest answers and characters.
However, I do not bet a dime on the average American knowledge of the world or his own country!!
There is a BBC documentary called "The Power of Nightmares" which argues convincingly that al Qaeda is mostly or entirely fictional.
Is it a correct analysis?
I don't know.
And neither do you.
Also, every historical example of "not letting stupid people vote" has resulted in poor and working-class disenfranchisement, as well as results which might diplomatically be described as not racially neutral.
To Anonymous 2:00,
Al-Qaida means the "the database" in English, and this Database existed in the 80s as the mujihadeen who were supplied by the CIA against the Soviets.
I do believe that al-Qaida still exists, but not as an independent entity any more than when they first started out.
Here I was thinking that my fellow countrymen were complete idiots. If not for this video I surely would never have realized I should never put that much faith in them. Although, unless there have been some under the table annexations lately, and the reporter just had the most top-secret yet to be released maps, there is no excuse for ANYONE to mistake a continent/country for Iran, France, or North Korea. Mr. Rall, thank you for helping me realize that this country's average citizen is subnormal.
One problem that I have with these types of presentations is that by displaying people at the far fringe of uninformed stupidity, it allows people who are only marginally better informed to think "Hey, I must be pretty smart; look at how much dumber other people are!" Kind of like how the documentary of the bed-ridden morbidly obese guy who can't get out of bed and washes with a towel on a stick allows us run-of-the-mill fatties to think "at least I'm not *that* fat."
How many people who *can* point out France or Iran on the globe still believe Saddam did 9/11?
Right, right. And then there's the not-so-stupid person who's nonetheless stupid enough to fall for cheap editing tricks. That's more dangerous, because said person has at least some influence over the public through editorials and the like.
Yes, this is a sampling of the stupidest people that they interviewed. But should anyone get those questions wrong? They thought Australia was Iran. I'm sure the vast majority of Americans couldn't locate Iran on a map even though they've been seeing images of it for years as we have invaded two of its neighbors.
I wasn't there when they edited this thing together, but I think it's a fair representation of the average American. Just the other day, I was at dinner with someone who thought Afghanistan was in Africa. Bear in mind, she was traveled. She'd been to Africa–to Afghanistan-free Africa–yet still made that fundamental mistake.
Ask even the most well-educated American to point out Kurdistan, Sri Lanka and Kyrgyzstan on a map, and see what happens.
The saddest part, Ted, is that after 9/11 I thought the one silver lining would be Americans would know more than the less-than-nothing they did about Afghanistan, finally. I'd been harping on what happened there in the 1970s since my teens – for me Charlie Wilson is Klaus Barbie. It wasn't bad enough the Shah, the dicator of Pakistan, and Carter's Defense/Intelligence Complex overthrew the only good government there since the Caliphate to try to return a king, failed, and turned the country into Somalia. We had to make sure the worst element took and kept power, and now we blamed them for that.
That's why your 'stan Watch, however you conceived it, was golden.
And I agree that this video is for entertainment purposes only. The proles (how many neocons think Orwell didn't include lessons from Christianity or capitalism in his IngSoc? The same people who think the Nazis were socialist, even after the Night of the Long Knives, I imagine) have been de-educated. You can't shame them out of it, and in an infotainment culture, a Gresham's law of bad, cheaply obtained factoids driving out reality applies.
What Matt Bors said. No one should be getting the the answers to these questions wrong. How is it possible that *anyone* thinks Catholicism is the official religion of Israel? Of course the video is heavily edited, but I'm mystified how Americans can be this dunderheaded.
This reminds me a lot of the "Jaywalking" segment of The Tonight Show. What's deceptive is that one cannot tell how many people had to be interviewed before these people were found. Still some of this is shocking. How can anyone believe "Star Wars" is based on a true story? Also, in response to another comment, how does anyone locate Kurdistan on a map when even experts redefine it seemingly every day?