Every year the Annenberg Center conducts a survey of civics knowledge among American adults and every year we obligingly fail it miserably. This gives older Americans a chance to complain about how modern education is a shambles compared to the rigorous standards of their day¹ and it gives Annenberg a chance to moan about how knowledge of civics is essential to participation in a democratic society blah blah blah.
But beware of glass houses. Here are the results of one question over the past few years:
Take a look at freedom of religion: Annenberg claims that last year 56% of all adults knew that this was part of the First Amendment, but this year only 24% knew it. That's a whole lot of forgetting in the space of one year! On the other hand, it went up from 15% to 47% between 2017 and 2020. We sure got a lot smarter during the Trump administration!
The other questions show similar spikes. This is obviously ridiculous and suggests that Annenberg knows very little about statistics or polling—something that might be more important in modern democracies than being able to name the three branches of government. Can anyone explain what's going on here?
¹This is because they never seem to realize that the Annenberg survey is a survey of adults, not high school kids.
Yeah, looks like sampling variations. You always get variations in answers.
Fox, MSNBC, and CNN right? No, wait, Facebook, Apple, and Google? Larry, Moe, and Curly.
Shemp never gets any love.
He's a repugnant GQPer*, but Milwaukee sportstalk radio mainstay & Marquette basketball playbyplay announcer Steve "the Homer" True was right with this rule of Homerism: no matter how many Shemps you have, they'll never equal one Curly.
*Still think he could have an enlightening discussion with Transportation Secretltary & Progressive Bogeyman Pete Buttigieg, just two failchildren**, Homer & Pete, of Notre Dame professors, talking.
**One was a college tennis player & has called Marquette basketball for 30 years, the other did his undergrad at Harvard, served in Afghanistan, & was mayor of South Bend & first gay winner of a statewide presidential primary or caucus, but I like to abuse the word failchild to try to disempower its appeal to Fauxgressive trustfunders maligning other trustfunders.
And yet, this is "Shemptember" on MeTV...
Whatever the problems of polling, something is rotten in the liberal democratic tradition if trump and the republicans can have any influence at all.
https://www.salon.com/2022/09/12/scholar-saw-all-this-coming-americans-do-not-really-understand-liberal-democracy/
Many people do not understand the importance of the rule of law or why the division of powers in government matters or why open and respectful debate is so important to a healthy democracy and society.
But there's no escaping the fact that things are getting worse in terms of global democracy. For example, [Hungarian leader] Viktor Orbán can talk openly about how there shouldn't be mixing of the races, and then be invited as the keynote speaker at the CPAC meeting in Texas.
Europe has a long history of various kinds of fascist regimes coming to power. For many Europeans, my concerns and thesis are more realistic. The vast majority of American academics (along with bloggers, pundits, and Democratic Party) are still hanging onto the notion that this populist moment is just a bump in the road and there has to be some kind of correction back to democracy as we understand it. I think that's dead wrong.
I do too!
Let us ask sturestuhl how the reichwing won in Sweden.
Also, actual fascists, e.g. from the Fascia region of the Italian Peninsula*, are about to win in Italy.
*Anything else is just Sparkling Authoritarian Corporatism.
Probably the same reason they win everywhere…
The gains for the Sweden Democrats come on the back of what many voters saw as failed immigration and integration policies.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/anti-immigration-election-gains-divide-sweden-worry-rights-groups-2022-09-15/
No good answers from me on this problem.
Don't get your knickers knotted. Sweden's "hard right" occupies about the same place on the political spectrum as Bernie Sanders. Never forget that by the standards of the other countries of the "first world", the Democrats are extreme right party.
This zombie lie again.
So, on your alt-Earth, Bernie Sanders is a white nationalist who favors nuclear power, more aggressive policing and longer prison terms?
Show, don't tell.
I know nothing about this and am not taking time to research it, which makes me the perfect internet commenter.
My guess looking at this data is that they used a different sampling method during the pandemic, which is why the 2022 numbers look kind of like the pre-pandemic numbers and not at all like the 2020 and 2021 numbers.
Good guess.
One small glimmer of hope: Modi's slight criticism of Putin on Ukraine - not that he has made life safe for Muslims & women in his own country.
Like a yung Snoop Dogg on "Gin n' Juice", Putin can forget his Indo.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2022/sep/17/putin-nuclear-ukraine-biden-russian-forces-nato-kremlin
“Don’t give him an inch. Keep him on the run. Show him there’s no way out but back. And if, panicked and vengeful, Putin does indeed threaten to use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, the response must be hard and clear. Biden must personally and formally inform him, in advance, that any such attack, breaking the global taboo on nuclear aggression and undercutting international security, would be viewed as an act of war against the US and Nato – with all the awesome, regime-toppling consequences that might entail. Perhaps Biden has already done this. Hopefully he has. In which case, stop pulling western punches. Get on and ensure Ukraine wins, wins well, and wins soon.”
If we’re all going to suffer an economic collapse anyway… might as well go all in.
True Men of diplomacy are restrained enough not to rub the lamp again.
Putin's threat of using nuclear weaponry of an unspecified type, allowing his conscripts & mercenaries to commit mass murder, seems to have proven that the likelihood of "Mutually Assured Destruction" can easily be used by one nuclear power to block another from preventing crimes against humanity or attempted genocide.
So the advantage seems to be with the first to even threaten use, let alone to actually use it.
SCOTUS has essentially made Christianity the state religion rendering the establishment clause inoperative? Seriously thought, it just looks like really poor poll design.
If they were truly Originalists, the Lean Six Supremes would elevate Deism to (semi) official status & be neither favorable to nor abusive of the Papists like the Calverts of Maryland, Congregationalists in various New England bouroughs, Huguenot & Sephardic asylees in Charleston, & Quaker racemixers in Pennsylvania.
Where's Waldo when you need him?
Well, we have to take into account how the meanings of these Bill of Rights rights has changed in recent years.
* Freedom of religion now means having the federal government impose your religious practices on everybody.
* Freedom of speech means storming the capitol (state as well as federal)
* Freedom of assembly means the above, plus taking hostage, injuring, or even killing government officials, elected or otherwise
* Freedom of the press ... well, that's just communism. BAD!!
Increasingly, the only "freedom" that many Americans recognize is the right to own a gun, carry it openly everywhere with you, and use it to prevent others from speaking, assembling, and publishing.
For what it's worth, I think a majority of Americans disagree with these more modern, "conservative" (aka "reactionary" and "revanchist") interpretations. But facts are facts.
It won't change til the latchkey kid gen X is too old & infirm to be outdoors alone.
Once the Reality Bites generation turns into Cocoon, they won't be openly carrying heavy arms at the convalescent home. & if they do, Pill Lady will have them so zonk'd on laudanum they won't have the volition to try again.
+1 for Pill Lady
Borrowed that from early years ONION newsbriefs about Reagan's postpresidency.
Why does everyone assume Annenberg doesn't know how to poll? Maybe they know how to poll, but large numbers of people are vastly unable to recall things that haven't been ranted about on their TVs lately.
What they're showing is a reversion to the mean, which might be good news after the Trump era raised everyone's awareness only by inducing high anxiety day after day.
Good guess. In presenting the 2021 results, the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center offered much the same interpretation:
I'd say you are much more likely to be correct than Drum is.
"What they're showing is a reversion to the mean, which might be good news "
The problem with reversion to the mean is that it may lead to trump winning again, and this time it will go much further from the mean than the previous time.
The last Americans to actually know what was in the Constitution were the ones who wrote it. Ever since then, most citizens could not give less of a shit. A small number of fanatic gun humpers claim to care about the 2nd amendment, but that's about it. IIRC some intrepid reporter during WWII was accompanying some GIs in the Pacific and at one point during a lull in the fighting was able to ask them what American "values" they were most proud to be fighting for. They all sort of looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders. One guy finally spoke up and said, "Well, I don' know about values or whatever, but I sure could go for some of my mom's blueberry pie right now." I dont' know how apocryphal that story is, but it speaks to a larger truth: for most American's, what they value isn't the Constitution or the Declaration or whatever, but symbols of what makes them feel safe and secure. Mom, flag, and pie. Quite literally. Unfortunately that also means that whatever deranged dictator or demogogue who can claim to guarantee those things for them cheaply or wrap themselves in them gets their vote, which sucks for democracy.