No Critical Thinking Here . . . In the USA, That Is

16 of the Dumbest Things Americans Believe -- And the Right-Wing Lies Behind Them

By Sarah Seltzer, AlterNet
Posted on November 13, 2010, Printed on November 13, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/148826/

Americans are often misinformed, occasionally downright dumb, and easily is led by juicy-sounding rumors. But while the right wing is taking full advantage of this reality, the left worries that calling out lies is "rude."

Remember when Congressman Joe Wilson stood up during Obama’s State of the Union address to falsely shout “you lie?” He was chastised soundly by the pundit class. But mostly he drew heat for being impolite, and was compared to Kanye West and other famous “interrupters.”

Revisiting Wilson's foolish tirade underscores the state of our upside-down political world. He shouted “you lie” in the face of truth, but President Obama is hesitant to speak up when he’s being slandered with bald, glaring untruths. The dark irony will continue as the Republicans take over the House this winter and the rumors and insinuations from extremist right-wing pundits keep circulating. It feels like no one with a loud enough megaphone has the courage to call a spade a spade, or more accurately a lie a lie.

We’ve gone far beyond Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness” into a more “truth-be-damned” environment, what Rick Perlstein described in the Daily Beast as a “mendocracy. As in, rule by liars.”

Here are some examples of recent ways that we have made inroads in ignorance:

• Polling data during and after last week’s midterm elections suggested that many Americans genuinely believe Obama has raised their taxes -- even though the reality is that our president actually lowered them for most of us. This means that people trust pundits like Rush Limbaugh, a major force behind spreading that lie, over the numbers on their own tax returns.
   
• Another recent phenomenon? Half of new Congressmen don’t believe in the reality of global warming. It’s not that they don’t just disagree on the source or the severity of the problem. They flat out don’t think that the world is getting warmer--despite evidence outside their windows.
   
• The new Congress will probably try to restore millions of dollars of funding for scientifically-inaccurate, largely disastrous abstinence-only curriculum in schools, many of which have been shown to spread lies like "condoms don't work" and "abortion causes cancer." 
   
• News outlets picked up a wildly inflated and completely outlandish claim that Obama’s trip abroad cost $200 million dollars a day from an Indian blog--and listeners have swallowed it. (In this case, the White House flat-out denied it.)

The scary thing is, these kinds of rumors have a way of taking root in the popular consciousness. Just as the election season began heating up earlier this year,Newsweek published a list of “Dumb Things Americans Believe.” While some of them are garden-variety lunacy, a surprising number are lies that were fed to Americans by our leaders on the far Right. This demonstrates that media-fed lies can easily become ingrained in the collective memory if they’re not countered quickly and surely. Newsweek’s list included the following twelve statistics taken from very recent and semi-recent polls and surveys. The first half are directly related to right-wing rumormongering.

• Nearly one-fifth of Americans think Obama is a Muslim (or is that Muslin?). Thanks, Fox news, for acting like this was a matter of opinion, not fact.
   
• 25% of Americans don’t believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution while less than 40% do. Consider the fact that several of our newly elected officials, specifically newly-elected Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, share that belief.
   
• Earlier this year, nearly 40% of Americans still believed the Sarah Palin-supported lie about “Death Panels” being included in health care reform.
   
• As of just a few years ago, about half of Americans still suspected a connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of September 11th, a lie that was reinforced by none other than Dick Cheney.
   
• While a hefty amount of this demonstrable cluelessness gets better as the respondents get younger, all is not well in the below-30 demographic. A majority of “young Americans” cannot identify Iraq or Afghanistan--the places their peers are fighting and dying--on a map.
   
• Two out of five Americans, despite the whole separation of church and statebeing a foundation of our democracy thing, think teachers should be able to lead prayer in classrooms. So it seems that those right-wingers clamoring to tear down the wall between church and state aren’t the only ones who don’t know their constitutional principles.
   
• Many Americans still believe in Witchcraft, ESP and other supernatural phenomena. Does that explain why Christine O’Donnell was so quick to deny her “dabbling”?
   
• Speaking of antiquated religious beliefs, about a decade ago, 20% of Americans still believed that the sun revolves around the earth. That's just sad, considering that even the Vatican has let Galileo off the hook for being right.
   
• Only about half of Americans realize that Judaism is the oldest of the three monotheistic religions. Other examples of wild misunderstanding about religion and the separation of church and state can be found in this fall’s Pew survey on Americans’ religious knowledge.
   
• This one made a huge splash when it appeared. In 2006 more Americans were able to name two of the “seven dwarves” than two of the Supreme Court justices. And that was before Kagan and Sotomayor showed up. To be fair, “happy and sleepy” are easy to remember.
   
• More Americans can identify the Three Stooges than the three branches of government--you know, the ones who are jockeying over our welfare.. 

So what to do in a political and cultural landscape in which well-told lies have more validity than fact-based truth? Perlstein explained how this environment gets created by explaining what happened on election day this year:

“...by a two-to-one margin likely voters thought their taxes had gone up, when, for almost all of them, they had actually gone down. Republican politicians, and conservative commentators, told them Barack Obama was a tax-mad lunatic. They lied. The mainstream media did not do their job and correct them. The White House was too polite—"civil," just like Obama promised—to say much. So people believed the lie.”

We’ve entered a bizzarro world in which calling out lies is considered rude, says Perlstein, so liars are allowed to sit tight dominate the discourse. This gels with Bill Maher’s critique of the Rally for Sanity, that calling for “balance for balance’s sake” ignores two important aspects of news reporting: facts and evidence.

Blaming Americans for being ignorant unwashed masses--or taking potshots at an education system that doesn’t teach critical thinking-- would be the easy answer to this conundrum. 

But the reality is that if messaging has such a big effect on Americans, then messaging matters. Folks on our end have to counter the lies with well-told, unabashed unironic, truth-telling. And we have to demand that our media, and our politicians, call out the other side. As Perlstein notes, “When one side breaks the social contract, and the other side makes a virtue of never calling them out on it, the liar always wins. When it becomes "uncivil" to call out liars, lying becomes free.” Even worse, once lies begin to spread, they become more than rumors--they become permanent beliefs.

 

Sarah Seltzer is an associate editor at Alternet, an RH Reality Check staff writer and a freelance journalist based in New York City. Her work can be found at www.sarahmseltzer.com.

 

Comments

[Ax Dillingham]

I'm really starting to not like democracy. If people are this dumb, I don't want them voting.

[Kailagh Powell]

Many people in our nation are so ignorant to truth! Its unbelievable what some will accept as fact and support with their votes. Voting Americans should make it their responsibility to seek truth with these critical matters and not get suckered in by radical far right talk radio and "news" programs clouded with a conservative fog.

[Nicole Shannon]

I honestly don't know what to say to this. We are an incredibly stupid nation. Just because it is said on a news program or by a politician, many accept it as true. We need to learn to think! If we are too lazy to research and learn about the issues, then we do not deserve to be able to choose our leaders. Personally, I think a test on the candidates before an election should determine who votes. That way, only those who are informed on the different candidates may input their judgment on who should run the country.

[Taylor Britain]

Ax what would you rather us go to? If not Democracy? There is uneducated voting on both sides.

[Ax Dillingham]

I believe we should have an Intelligocracy where only educated, intelligent, critically thinking people can vote.

[Daniel Prohaska]

It is WONDERFUL to finally see someone telling things like they are! Every American should be required to read this article, it should be published in every textbook in every school across the country. If more people were informed then they would make better decisions and we wouldn't end up with crackpots in office all of the time. It is NEVER rude to call out a liar. When you find a liar you should not hesitate to shout from the tallest mountain and yell across the widest plain the TRUTH! That is how things get done. That is why our government is in a dead lock right now. For those of you interested in reading more about current events and things happening in politics and our world feel free to read and comment on a blog site I created: http://dprohaska.wordpress.com/.

[Alex Oakes]

Ax...although it is a good concept we could never ban people that are not intelligent from voting. The uproar across America would be enough to trigger an earthquake. I do think that the public school systems need to do a better job educating our students in politics and world issues. The only way to help fix this problem is to start at the root cause which I believe is the education system.

I do agree that as a whole American citizens are not informed enough to make sound choices as to who should be in office. This is an issue that needs to be addressed but I am not sure how it could or should be done.

Daniel...This is a great article and I do think more should read it! I don't know about putting it in text books (ha-ha) but it is a good article. Oh and nice blog site!

On a last note...Lies need to be addressed if they are circulating and being announced then this will further instigate the problems we have now with politics and uneducated electors. Lies should be questioned and the TRUTH shall set us free!

[Kevin Gaston]

This is what most Americans don't know. They refuse to hear it. When something comes along that threatens our safety, we quickly throw it away to find something more appealing. It is just human nature. However, it is time to get out of this system. The way we are doing things is just not working. Power and wealth have become too important. the fact that we would like to improve the quality of life is not important anymore. It is really sad to see that many Americans choose to believe what they hear or see without examining the facts for themselves. Sadly this is what Christianity has made it. Understanding without knowledge.

[Megan Ashley]

That's why we live in a messed up world. Our citizens are doing things based on one thing they hear, not knowing if it is true or false.

[Amy Salmond]

Instead of pointing the finger and laughing at the idiocy of Americans, I wonder what would happen if we stopped complaining for a second and considered how we can turn this around. How can we educate the masses, how can we spread the truth rather than rumors, etc. I agree with them that it's increasingly sad how silly America is getting, but Sarah Seltzer's just as guilty until she - and everyone else for that matter - does something about it.

By the way, I find it funny that she considers an abstinence-based sex-ed talk and ESP to be outlandish and ridiculous. When was the last time she walked into a high school to see all the young pregnant girls who, in all honesty, cannot emotionally or financially support a child? As for the ESP thing, find a better reason to make fun of people.