5 Reasons Humanity Is Terrible at Democracy

[BridgeTheGap]

Ask the average person what's wrong with government and you'll hear all about corrupt politicians, corporate lobbyists and shady backroom deals. But, of course, we elected those corrupt politicians, and the more you look at the situation, the more it appears that as people, we are just really bad at democracy.

In the middle of the heated health care debate in 2010, the anchors at Fox News got a memo from the bosses telling them to start referring to the Democrats' plan as "government-run health insurance" rather than use the term "public option," which everyone else was using.

Why? Because CBS and NBC both ran polls showing that when you call it the "public" plan, up to 75 percent of the people are in favor -- after all, everybody likes public parks and public libraries, etc. It's a friendly word. But when polls inserted the word "government," support plummeted to 43 percent. The Exact. Same. Plan. You know, the same way that a lot more people bought canola oil after they changed the name from "rape seed oil."

Likewise, only 34 percent of Americans say they strongly support "homosexuals" in the military. But a majority -- 51 percent -- strongly support "gay men and lesbians" serving in the military. That's right: You can increase the strongest support by a third by simply avoiding the "H" word. The "strongly oppose" group goes down by a third.

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_19086_5-reasons-humanity-terrible-at-democracy.html#ixzz1HXE71ca2

[Lasher]

1. Very good article - funny too!

"He may be full of shit, but listening to him beats the hell out of talking to your family."

"A 20-year study of pundits and their prognostications found that they performed significantly worse than, say, a monkey making political predictions by throwing its own feces at a chart."

[louslobbs]

2. This is what people like Frank Luntz do for a living to help the Republicons stay in power.

They need to turn things that are good for the majority into bad, and things that are bad for the corporations into good using words and phrases tested on focus groups to taint the debate and confuse the people into thinking bad is good and good is bad. It's sick, but it works. That's why people have to do independent research and think independently rather than being dictated to by a corporate owned and obviously biased media who favors Republicons and (corporations), or in other words, themselves.

Lou

[Ramsey]

3. Actually wasn't it one of the founders who said that we now had a republic,

but could we keep it? (Obvious paraphrase, but the meaning is clear.)They knew the American republic was an experiment. Why is what we have now any different that King George? I think I'd vote for a monarchy over a corporate-archy

[BridgeTheGap]

4. Ben Franklin, when asked: "What form of government have you given us?"

"A Republic, if you can keep it."