"We’re so screwed as a nation."

[babylonsister]

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2010/11/19/its-gergens-world-and-were-living-in-it/


It’s Gergen’s World And We’re Living In It

by John Cole

Via Andrew, this graphic summarizing a Pew poll questioning what people do and don’t know:



The full poll is here, and Andrew remarks that “In a country where Sarah Palin is a serious political figure, I find it all too easy to believe.” Let’s revisit that Gergen and Taibbi Rolling Stone roundtable:

Taibbi: To me, the main thing about the Tea Party is that they’re just crazy. If somebody is able to bridge the gap with those voters, it seems to me they will have to be a little bit crazy too. That’s part of the Tea Party’s litmus test: “How far will you go?”

Gergen: I flatly reject the idea that Tea Partiers are crazy. They had some eccentric candidates, there’s no question about that. But I think they represent a broad swath of the American electorate that elites dismiss to their peril.

Hart: I agree with David. When two out of five people who voted last night say they consider themselves supporters of the Tea Party, we make a huge mistake to suggest that they are some sort of small fringe group and do not represent anybody else.

Taibbi: I’m not saying that they’re small or a fringe group.

Gergen: You just think they’re all crazy.

Taibbi: I do.

Gergen: So you’re arguing, Matt, that 40 percent of those who voted last night are crazy?

Taibbi: I interview these people. They’re not basing their positions on the facts — they’re completely uninterested in the facts. They’re voting completely on what they see and hear on Fox News and afternoon talk radio, and that’s enough for them.

Gergen: The great unwashed are uneducated, so therefore their views are really beneath serious conversation?

Taibbi: I’m not saying they’re beneath serious conversation. I’m saying that these people vote without acting on the evidence.

Gergen: I find it stunning that the conversation has taken this turn. I disagree with the Tea Party on a number of issues, but it misreads who they are to dismiss them as some kind of uneducated know-nothings who have somehow seized power in the American electorate. It is elitist to its core. We would all be better off if we spent more time listening to each other rather than simply writing them off.

Forty percent of Delaware voted for O’Donnell. That’s crazy.

David Gergen makes up his own reality and responds to feelings and trite beltway babble. Matt Taibbi looks around him and reacts to evidence and data. David Gergen is considered a very serious person and advises Presidents. Matt Taibbi is not considered serious because he says fuck.

We’re so screwed as a nation.

[cali]

1. collectively speaking, we're remarkably ignorant and intellectually

lazy. This is the nation of Glen Beck and Sarah Palin and a press that spews crap and engages in no real investigative journalism or critical thinking.

As you say:

We're so screwed as a nation.

Yep.

[indepat]

6. Screwed, blued, and tattooed unfathomably stupid and ignorant

:shrug:

[NRaleighLiberal]

2. Is it any surprise that the laziness and corporate purchase of the MSM

has infected a public that basically has lost the ability to critically think? That truth/fact is of less merit than a personal belief system? Yes, I think we are screwed.....and aside from banning TV for a year (a generation?) and having a whole slice of our country try to get their brains out of atrophy, I don't know what's going to turn it around.

[Cirque du So-What]

4. Adversity will get their attention

When people are affected on a personal level, they begin taking notice of the conditions that led to their current predicament.

So far, the entire electorate has avoided being immersed in the same cauldron together.

Wars in Iraq & Afghanistan? Casualties have been dispersed across the entire nation. Aside from individual families & communities who mourn individual losses, there is no great clamor to end hostilities that are draining our most precious resource - our young people.

Health-care costs? Sure, plenty of people are being bankrupted by medical care - whether or not they have insurance - but as long as they're not affected personally, people tend to shrug off such concerns.

Unemployment? Even if the true numbers of unemployed & underemployed approach 20%, that means around 80% of people are still working, and while they may go 'tsk tsk' at the plight of those without work, they're not upset enough to do anything that might jeopardize their own tenuous positions.

I could go on for days - bringing up issues that could drive an individual to take action - but not one is sufficient by itself to shake people from their malaise and take action collectively. I dread the situation that is horrific enough to galvanize ordinary people into demanding change, but I believe that it would take something terrible - resulting in hardship distributed across a wide swath of society - to get people roused from their slumber. If only we could get them interested before that day of reckoning arrives...

[NRaleighLiberal]

5. I've been saying that for years as well - that it may take something

truly horrific to be unifying and catalyze an awakening from such deep apathy....certainly hoping not, but wondering if anything else would actually have an impact. How did we get here? Or is it the natural evolution of our particular country in this particular time? :shrug:

[alterfurz]

11. "When it happens to you, you'll know it's true" -- Russian proverb

And as Churchill remarked of us, "Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing...after they have exhausted all other possibilities." Gotta be getting close now!

[elocs]

3. It's because the great unwashed are mostly willingly ignorant

as, in part, reflected by the Pew poll graph that makes them fodder for the TeaBaggers half truths and lies where up is defined as down and down-up and it is never questioned. Their intellectual curiosity consists of quaffing a cup of crap from their latest email forward like it is their open bottle of Mad Dog 20/20.

Great things have small beginnings, but so do terrible things and I believe it is a mistake for us to be dismissive of them. Economic and other conditions can lead to a perfect storm that can allow the crazies into positions of power of which they never dreamed of attaining. We need to treat them seriously.

[Cirque du So-What]

7. Ignorance is bliss

Knowledge can cause internal strife, therefore it can be painful. I suppose it's human nature to eschew pain in favor of bliss (fleeting though that notion may be).

[elocs]

8. Yes, ignorance is bliss, but they are proud of their ignorance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7BuQFUhsRM

[CrispyQ]

9. Their pride in their ignorance is the most stunning thing to me.

"I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic and national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us—then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir."

—The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan, 1996

[City Lights]

10. Teabaggers have no interest in listening. They're only interested in spewing their bile.

Get a clue, David.

[treestar]

12. They are know-nothings. If that is "elitist" too bad.

They don't get to pretend they are equal in intellect. Sure that is what they want to hear. But some people are more intelligent than others; some work harder at finding things out. They should get some credit for it.

[butterfly77]

13. K&R..