Atrios has a comment on a couple of New York Times op-ed regulars:
Who is the audience for things like, "Gail Collins and Bret Stephens shoot the shit." Not even picking on them, specifically, though Bret is a disgusting clown even by the low standards of the conservative movement, but genuinely confused that in the year of our Gritty, 2021, there's still a market for this genre of things.
I often wonder about this too, since these conversations are usually held with "reasonable" conservatives who simply don't appear to have any influence within the Republican Party anymore. But there's an answer, and I think it's pretty simple: Those of us whose hobby is politics consistently overestimate how much the rest of the country knows about politics.
Let me be clear: Even when we try really hard to take into account that most people don't know much about politics, we still overestimate how much they know.
It so happens that I have a sort of personal calibration tool for this, which I won't get into. But the gist of it is that even fairly smart people who follow politics a little bit are a million light years away from the kind of hobbyist knowledge that we have. We should think of ourselves as, say, Star Trek nerds who simply can't get it through our heads that about 98% of the country has no idea what we're talking about when we say "He's dead, Jim" in an ironic way. Most people, if they know anything at all, sort of vaguely understand that there's a spaceship, some kind of Spock guy, and maybe a weird finger salute that the geeks are into.
In other words, there's plenty of audience for the Gail and Bret show. It consists of smart people who follow politics a bit but aren't on Twitter, don't read political blogs, and just have opinions because they have opinions. Do they know that Republicans filibuster everything? Nah. Do they know that Republicans all think the election was stolen? Not really. Do they know anything at all about policy issues? Probably not, unless there happens to be one that impinges on their day jobs.
Frankly, for the vast majority of Americans, your best bet is to assume not that they are "low information voters" but that they know nothing about politics. Literally nothing. (Many, of course, know less than nothing because they spend a lot of time listening to Fox News and come away with misinformation that makes them mad. They forget about the misinformation quickly, but they don't forget that they're mad.)
So that's that. No matter how little you think most people know, cut it in half and then cut it in half again. That should get you somewhere close to the truth.
This is like Hofstader's Law, regarding the estimation of the amount of time required to complete a task:
But I think more than 2% of Americans know about, "He's dead, Jim," mostly because it's been parodied so much.
Close.
But you have to replace "politics" with "policy."
If only!!! I say again, if only.......
............ the issue was that most people don't know how, exactly, the filibuster works and its exceptions in reconcilliation bills. If only it was that a huge percentage do not know the difference between the House whip and Senate Majority leader.
That's "politics."
But now we have to add to ignorance of politics (which is not new) massive ignorance of policy (that would be bad enough), but we have belief in propaganda, which is worse.
The vast majority of voters don't vote policy; they vote feelings. It's not rational; it's emotional.
A great point. Perhaps my feelings are (a) its really fine that the majority does not pay attention to the finer details of politics, and (b) its also understandable that the vast majority don't pay attention to the finer details of policy, either.
Point (b) above is why we have a representative democracy rather than a direct democracy - the underlying assumption of the whole system is elected representatives are paid to figure out the policy details that the rest of us do not have time or expertise to do.
But now we have point (c), which is that around 42% of the population does not care about politics or policy - they just hate liberals.
Which is what you just said. 🙂
That's just what I was going to say - they vote feelings or impressions. Or for "their team." Or on the basis of whether they feel good about their lives or not.
I don't know about you, but I would rather have a beer with teetotaler George W. Bush.
Team in particular, sans very much sense of the why of the team.
Not that this is particularly unique to the US or new to the world.
Agreed. I cringed with all the bad information out there during the budget fights between Congress and Trump. The sad fact of the matter is the younger generations aren't required to take US Government in school anymore like I had to.
I see & hear this remark quite often. Thing is, I teach in high school and the students all take US government in 12th grade, just like I did back in the alleged glory days of public education.
You had to have been better than the nun I had for US Government my senior year in HS. She was a real Reagan worshiper with a board displaying both the Virgin Mary *and* Reagan with the slogan about God and Country.
I was a real rebel in her class, I told her to her face that I thought that a teacher of US government should be non-partisan and when ever we had debates in class I usually took the leftist side of things. I annoyed the heck out of her because I was the smart one in class but obviously wasn't in her tribe and I was already drifting away from the church having been disgusted with the communion of the church with the conservative movement in the 1980s.
Ah the "younger" generation doesn't learn like I did gambit, the ever-renewable complaint of Old People.
Not that I recall that such courses did anything of great utility in actually addressing Drum's point (that except for politics nerds, no one cared that much).
And as it's the "older generations" that are voting presently and demonstrating pig-ignorance on the finer points of politics, it rather makes the observation empty.
I'm a pretty big Star Trek fan but even I might not get "He's dead, Jim." out of context. My go-to Star Trek quote from the movies would probably be "Kaaaaannnnhhhh!!!!!"
Mine is 'That is really very poisonous,' but no one ever gets it.
I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer?
That may depend on your age. "He's dead, Jim" is from the original Star Trek, which I watched when it was new. If you arrived on the scene later, tag lines from later versions may be more familiar.
It's not so much what people know as what people are open to the possibility of knowing. As to Gail Collins and Stephens's column, Susan Collins would call it aspirational. It's what Trump's base would read if Trump would learn his lesson from Impeachment I.
I agree that most folks don't know much. In defense of readers of the Gail and Bret dialogues (of which I am one), if you will read their comments to the columns, you will find many that are knowledge based. It seems Bret is holding back his more repugnant viewpoints in the discussions I've read to date, saving those for his individual columns. I read these columns not for information but for the sometimes droll wit exhibited.
I'm somewhat baffled by the idea that Bret Stephens is repugnant. I mean, he says plenty of things I disagree with -- neoconservattive foreign policy seems to be his stock in trade -- but for the most part I don't think he's dishonest or arguing in bad faith. For example, he caught a lot of flack for suggesting hat the Atlanta shootings were not racially motivated. That may be contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, and it may be wrong, but it is neither ridiculous nor obviously racist. (I'll point out hat my wife, who was born and raised in Hong Kong, had exactly he same initial reaction). Now Stephens absolutely does argue in bad faith about climate change, but I'm not sure that's enough to dismiss him out of hand.
Considering that climate change is *the* existential issue of our time, I'm sure that's enough to dismiss him out of hand.
Stephens makes some valid points about "wokeness" etc. while basically denying and attempting to cover up the much more important fact that Republican success over the last 50+ years has been due to fomenting division based on racism and religion.
Reporters often aren't helping. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard some news correspondent intoning "In the Senate, bills take sixty votes to pass", I could buy myself a nice Tesla. NOOOOOOOOO! And senators do NOT bother to talk or hold the floor during a filibuster. That's ancient history, Hollywood style.
Why not?
There seem to be alot of people who don't know that it takes more than 60 to pass things when Republicans are blocking.
I do notice they often leave out 'when Republicans are blocking' or that only one Democrat is against the remainder of the party.
Do they know that Republicans filibuster everything? Nah. Do they know that Republicans all think the election was stolen? Not really. Do they know anything at all about policy issues? Probably not.
Dude. Most of them literally (based on knowledge polls) don't know which parties control the Senate and the House. Significantly many of them barely know that there IS a Senate and a House, much less what their roles are in making law. And that leaves aside the courts entirely.
Americans are not just appallingly ignorant about politics; they're appallingly ignorant about government.
And at least some of those in the rioters attacking the Capitol could not identify the words of the First Amendment. Kind of similar to an actual first-term "Republican" Second Amendment representative kvetching about the presumption of anyone wanting to alter the Constitution in any way.
My generation must have been the last to experience civics classes.
Civics classes are no remedy. We had a quarter on civics in 8th grade, and a semester in 11th grade. One of my middle school classmates seems to believe that the Constitution begins and ends with the 2nd Amendment, and that neither Congress nor the states could ever change it because "the Founding Fathers intended that the Constitution would never be changed." When I pointed out that the entire Bill of Rights is composed of amendments -- literal changes to the Constitution -- he simply replied "well, that's different." So I'm not sure how much his required classwork helped him.
FWIW, I skipped 11th grade civics because I was taking an AP class, and I never made it up, so I only got those 9 weeks of civics in 8th grade . . . and technically I wasn't supposed to graduate from high school.
and given the age demographic of the Trumpist rioters - not spring chickens - how on earth do you naive nerds think "civics" classes are the mitigatants?
Magical thinking on the part of the earnest nerdy Lefty Left commentariat
I once had a conversation with an acquaintance (and American citizen) about elections in this country. He was stunned to learn (from me, apparently) that we have elections every two years. I was mainly pointing out House of Rep elections, but of course those two-year-election cycles include many other things as well.
This friend came into the USA at a young age, but must have done most of his school years here: he was also, at the time of our talk, a college grad (I think he was a business major). But he just didn't seem to know hardly anything - at all - about our political system. He seemed incredulous about the two-year-election cycle. He really had a hard time believing me. And I had a strong suspicion that he didn't know quite what I was talking about when I mentioned the House of Reps.
How could that kind of thing be so surprising for him? Had he never even so much as briefly scanned a few headlines every now and then? I don't know. But that experience was a bit eye-opening for me.
If you count state and local, we have elections a lot more often than every two years,
Yes in Virginia we have our state and local elections in the off years, this year we have elections for the house of delegates, Attorney General, Lt. Governor and Governor. In 2023 we'll have elections for the state senate as well as local elections for the county board of supervisors, the school board, Sheriff and commonwealth's attorney.
I'm amazed at the number of people who don't know these basics about their own government (or for that matter, about basic physics, history, etc.).
But ask them about their favorite sports team, and prepare to be amazed at the depth and passion of their analysis....
Or their astrological sign
In the past, I would have wanted the word "mad" to be replaced with "angry." After the last 5 years, it's absolutely acceptable to me when used in this context.
Damn it Jim, I’m a pundit not a prognosticator! ...
😉
Most people know nothing about politics and nothing about government, yet somehow or other almost everyone thinks they're hip to it, because it's expected of them, the same way it's expected of them to imagine that owning a gun makes them a responsible adult who can decide for himself who lives and who dies and who is the star of his own action movie.
Who expects these things? One is real and one is not, one is hard and one is easy.
This is also why Ben Shapiro talks about WAP so much.
He wants us to think he's still young & hip & with it, & hasn't been out of touch with pop music at least since Nine Days was relating to us the biography of a woman who drowned the whole world.
Or that Lil Nas video. How do conservatives even know that exists, except that they're trying hard to find something to be offended by.
Only things that have no serious concern of government motivate them, and that motivation is in every case to cause harm and injury.
I agree that the vast majority of people know approximately nothing about politics, but how the hell does that lead them to to want to read Gail Collins and Bret Stephens bullshit about nothing for no reason?
Peoples interaction with government and politics:
PTA, potholes, parking tickets.
And zoning boards, DMV, IRS, SSA and other bureaucracies - where the experience is usually negative, and that leads them to conclude that "government is the problem."
That Atrios comment seems pretty dumb. Reading that Collins/Stephens conversation is actually quite enlightening. For instance, last week Stephens argued that the Georgia voting bill massively expanded voting rights. Sure enough, in the following few days that was the argument from the right. Despite being anti-Trump, Stephens is an excellent guide to the views of the corporate wing of the party, which is still quite powerful even as it tries to figure out how to dump the Trump wing it was forced to ally with for survival reasons.
I like that Ol' Bedbug tried to get a George Washington University law professor cancelled.
Well, he was certainly correct that the language of "vermin" has a long, sad, and dangerous history in political discourse. Tutsis in Rwanda, and Jews in 1930s Germany could explain this to you (Stephens' father's family fled a pogrom). The response to his complaint was essentially, "I was just kidding, can't you take a joke?" and after the past four years, I think we can all agree that doesn't justify much of anything.
The professor with nine Twitter followers whom Stephens went on jihad against is also Jewish.
this is true and sad. I just keep thinking people can understand reality but no, they just kind of exist...
Doing well with low information voters is the sauce Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump knew to stir.
We all know the lowest information voters were Perotistas, Forbesians, Cainiacs, Sandernistas, Trumpistas, & Yang Press Gangers, with a slight head nod to the prep school nonces for 88 year old Mike Gravel.
Frankly, for the vast majority of Americans, your best bet is to assume not that they are "low information voters" but that they know nothing about politics. Literally nothing.
Bad use of "literally." Most of Americans have heard of "Republicans" and "Democrats." They know we have these contests every so often called "elections." I reckon the bulk of them tend do associate older white people with the GOP and younger, less white people with Democrats. And so on. That's not "literally" nothing.
(Sure, plenty of Americans don't even possess the above, basic level of knowledge, but it can't be the "vast majority.").
Pretty damn close to "literally nothing" with some folks though. If only I had a nickel for every time I was asked "Hey Krowe, you're political, you'll know this. Which one's the Republican and which is the Democrat?" (in regard to any policy or politician, including presidents).
Luckily (maybe?) most of the true ignoramuses don't vote.
Pretty damn close to "literally nothing" with some folks though.
Yes. I stated as much in the coda to my comment. But Kevin wrote that this characterizes "the vast majority" of Americans. And that's clearly not the case. Most Americans possess at least a patina of knowledge regarding politics (the fact that we have elections, the fact that we have political parties, the fact that there are these people called "Republicans" and "Democrats" and so on). My objection to his use of "literally" flows from the fact that he married it to "vast majority" when describing the US population. I think that's clearly inaccurate.
Heh. You need to keep up with the (d)evolution of language! "Literally" has evolved to mean "figuratively." (Seriously.) And we now write "reign in", instead of "rein in", because nobody knows for horses anymore.
Yeah, Americans' basic levels of knowledge seem to be in decline.
While I'm fine with some language change due to conventional usage (plural of octopus becoming octopusses no longer bothers me), I'm holding the line at "literally" - because there's no good substitute! People often misuse "literally" to mean "very" or "extremely" when we've got lots of perfectly good words for that concept already. But how else do you convey the literal meaning of "literally"? I won't let them take that away from me!
Agreed. If "literally" now means "figuratively" then "up" might just as well mean "down" and "hot" might just as well mean "cold."
Pingback: Most Americans Know Nothing About Politics. Nothing. – Kevin Drum - Xandoblogs
I think KD's basically right, which is why politics in this country is largely driven by emotions and feelings, not reasoned debate over policy preferences. You vote for candidate X because Taylor Swift retweeted something about them, or candidate Y wears a cowboy hat and carries his gun proudly.
I'm sure in a few years, campaigns will simply use AI, voter sabermetrics, and deepfake video technology to generate a candidate precisely designed to appeal to a particular district. It won't even be a real person, it will just be a virtual candidate on social media who projects juuuuust the right image to connect with the voters' feelings. What's her stance on the issues? "What's an issue? What's a "stance? Isn't it about time we put politics behind us and get work done? (*Smiles and holds up AR-15*)
Boebert-2024.
That's both her presidential campaign & the mechanized &/or digitized version of Rocky Mountain Palin.
I was thinking more Max Headroom + MTG, but yeah, that's basically the idea...
When MAGA becomes Mecha.
(How much do they think they know, though?)
Really, I think American politics for most people has become largely like team sports: you support who (and what) you support because that's who your peers support. Telling a Trumpublican that their party is working against their interests is like telling a New England Patriots fan that their team cheats: they don't care as long as their team wins (... and the Steelers and the Ravens lose).
I agree, but I also think it is important to remember that there are 3 different domains of knowledge that people have to know about to really understand politics:
1) How American government is designed, and how the processes work. This includes everything from how many votes it takes to pass legislation, what areas the President can actually make policy in, what is unconstitutional, and what level of government decides and controls something. This is the stuff you were supposed to learn in school, but no school course really covers all of it.
2) Politicking. Who the major players are, how the parties actually use the existing processes to get what they want, what the dog whistles are, the current "scandals," etc. This is what most political junkies pay attention to, and is where politics can become like being a sports fan.
3) Policy. This is the academic side of things. It relies on pretty dry understandings of research results, existing law, and even some knowledge of foreign governmental actions. Almost no one knows much about policy at all. Even people who are pretty policy wonky will have huge unevenness in their knowledge. It is just too big for one person to really grasp.
It seems that most people pay attention to the politicking. That is the part where our emotions are most easily engaged.
Atrios calls Bret Stephens a "disgusting clown". Atrios has always been a model for lefty intolerance. What conservative does Atrios think is not a disgusting clown?
Political intolerance is still the greatest negative characteristic of many people on the left. To so many, if you disagree then you are a disgusting person, a racist, or whatever. The Trump era has made this thinking that much easier to adopt. However, this intolerance is part of the reason so many are repelled and vote opposite to whatever liberal-progressives want.
Still, as a former Republican, seeing how Trumpism has blinded and lobotomized so many ordinary conservatives, I find the intolerance of many people on the left as less offensive than I once did. And I catch myself stereotyping rural whites and the white working class.
On the other hand, with Critical Race Theory basically saying the US is a fundamentally defective country, and if you disagree with CRT narratives you are a white supremacist, lefty intolerance may one day reach Trumpian levels of madness. Maybe CRT will flame out first, I don't know.
Why should I tolerate people who want to kill me and over throw the government?
The 50% of republicans that don't want that I can tolerate just fine. I think they're short sighted and somewhat cruel, but we can live together and interact.
"Why should I tolerate people who want to kill me and over throw the government?"
You shouldn't. I am talking about people who may disagree with you on say abortion, immigration, affirmative action, climate change policy, trans rights, LGBT issues, gun control, Obamacare, and US racial circumstances.
Nice to know you can tolerate 50% of conservatives.
Someone who disagrees with me on all those things is living on a different planet, and I would call them delusional and a menace.
How do I tolerate this?
"How do I tolerate this?"
You are making my point. Many on the left refuse to believe there could be alternative respectable positions on key issues, so they become intolerant of those who disagree with them. The intolerance ranges from haughty disdain to outright hate.
The left has not always been right in history. Many on the left supported eugenics before WWII. Some of the worst governments in history were driven by extreme leftism.
On virtually every issue there are at least two alternative views, and no one can be certain which is right.
I admit I cannot see any respectable area within the current conservative view of any of those topics, where, for them, the most extreme and harmful positions are the only acceptable positions. How much murder is just the right amount to yet be respectable?
When topics in the past, like eugenics, were endorsed by leftists, and almost everyone else in some way in the 1920s, they were new and the greater ramifications were little appreciated. Conservatives quickly disabused everyone of that idea.
I may have misunderstood your point, I thought you meant someone who espoused all that at once, rather than someone who may be holding just one or two of those views independently.
Also your missing that it's no so much that Trumpism did that, as a great many people ALLOWED it to do that. A great many people saw Trump as giving them license to act and think in a way they already wanted to but didn't dare.
"Also your missing that it's no so much that Trumpism did that, as a great many people ALLOWED it to do that."
I fully agree regarding the harm Trumpism has done and continues to do. And we should not forget his prominent enablers. Whole books will be written on this, and it may take a generation to recover.
"A great many people saw Trump as giving them license to act and think in a way they already wanted to but didn't dare."
It seems most Trump supporters just got dumber. Hate crimes went up some, but they were no worse than in 2008. It seems most Trump supporters just wanted to agree with whatever Trump said. They acted like sheep.
Maybe that wouldn't be true if the MSM spent more time reporting on policy details and less time on inside the beltway gossip, horse races, and sex scandals. Who knows, if the NYT were willing to point of that most of what GOP politicians say is not in fact true by, say, asking domain experts, people might actually know something about politics. Instead, we get the substitutes for journalism like the Gail and Brett comedy hour.
There's a difference between the DC Cocktail Circuit tut-tutting the fictitious sex trafficking ring in the nonexistent cellar of a pizzeria & the same folks discussing Matt Gaetz's actual Mann Act violations & Andrew Cuomo's hamhanded office manner.
There's a place to reveal tawdriness: when it's real.
"Those of us whose hobby is politics consistently overestimate how much the rest of the country knows about politics."
I've never overestimated how much American citizens and voters know about politics. That is because from the time I became really interested in politics and international relations I've spent a considerable amount of time engaging average citizens and voters in discussions about politics. I found out early on that the vast majority of voters know virtually nothing about politics. Today they can tell you about sports or the Kardashians or Beyonce, but ask them about something like the ACA or the Iraq War and the conversation will either be entirely one-sided or over.
I'd say things have gotten even worse over time, especially since the introduction of the Internet. That may be because today, when people know something about politics, it is probably wrong, often dangerously wrong. So, I might get more answers to my questions, but the answers will often be worse than simply drawing a blank look.
For some time, I've doubted the future of our political system. Religion increasingly plays an oversized role* and the breadth and depth of ignorance of most devout Christians is breathtaking. After all, they get their politics from "God," and they all know what "He" wants them to do.
*Even as the number of people claiming a religion decreases. However, giving up traditional religion (whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or other) and adopting a cosmic sense of spirituality doesn't seem to be an improvement in terms of political knowledge.
As for Collins and Stephens -- based on the few times I have read their column, it seems that Collins is at her worst in this duet. Stephens may be at his disingenuous best, which is still very, very bad. Is their column supposed to be the antidote to people shouting at and over each other (Crossfire)? It mostly seems like a calmer, quieter form of vacuousness.
Pingback: Macron gendert linke deutsche Pop-Up-Vergleiche und fragt sich ob er in Tübingen ein Mandat für No-Covid hat - Vermischtes 08.04.2021 - Deliberation Daily