Reuters has published the result of what is being touted as the Ignorance Index. The one question as an example: “Guess how many U.S. girls aged 15-19 give birth each year. Go ahead, guess. If you calculated the number at 3 percent you’re correct; if you guessed 24 percent, you’re American.”
I rarely watch TV. If I do, it tends to be national news – never local that think a burning house is news or some guy shot his wife in a domestic dispute. I was at dinner and the TV was on. I could not believe the TV advertisements for the elections. They are all NEGATIVE calling the other a liar or misrepresenting the facts on everything. One said the candidate cut the number of police, made the streets more dangerous and then shows a picture of ISIS and then said she raise taxes. Then the very next advertisement flips and calls the other a liar for something or another. There was ZERO advertisement about anything other than vote for me because I lie less that the other liar.
It seems that the Ignorant Index may be more tied to the bias and lack of integrity of the media. They focus on sensationalism to gain readership and in the process focus of one thing and create false images in the minds of the average person.
A classic issue is immigration and Muslims. Americans, according to the Ignorant Index, “significantly miss the mark on the proportion of the population that is comprised of immigrants, guessing 32 percent against the true number of 13 percent. Americans also overestimate the number of Muslims in the population, 15 percent versus only 1 percent in reality, and underestimate the number of Christians, 56 percent to 78 percent. ”
It seems as if the problem is not that Americans are ignorant, they are being fed nonsense by the media to sell newspaper and TV advertising. We have fallen into a cycle of Yellow Journalism that was begun by Pulitzer. It was Pulitzer for created the Spanish-American War by making up shit to sell newspapers. The famous Pulitzer Prize given by Columbia University is named after the father of Yellow Journalism – go figure!
One good place to start is OUTLAW negative advertising. COMPEL political candidates to state what they stand for rather than calling their opponent a liar. Then if they do not vote for what they profess and knuckle under to party rule, that should be FRAUD and time for a vacation in the “Big House” (Penitentiary named after a place you were supposed to be silent and do penance).. We seem to elect people for no reason and then wonder why nothing changes. Obama’s vote for me for real change has been a joke – he kept the same people Bush had in place. This is why polls place politicians at 7% trust factors. The days of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Maggie Thatcher who at least stood for what they believed in regardless of what people thought, are over. They were at least ethical.
At what point does revolution take place? It does not appear to be a percentage in our review of history, but the economic trend. In other words, turn the economy down and the percent of discontent rises exponentially. So beware – not ghosts and goblins, but politicians 2015.75-2020. So perhaps Americans will wise up only when the economy turns down and the Internet provides a greater proportion of real news compared to mainstream media. Indeed, the younger generation under 40 rely on the internet and those who subscribe to newspapers or watch the TV news are diminishing rapidly. This in itself will be a dynamic shift that restores freedom of the press and only then perhaps we will see Americans rise in the Ignorance Index.
Number of Muslims – any percent is too much!
“…significantly miss the mark on the proportion of the population that is comprised of immigrants, guessing 32 percent against the true number of 13 percent.”
How can we know the true number given that there are millions of ILLEGAL immigrants who are not document and therefore unknown?
“not documented” is what I intended to write.
“The days of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Maggie Thatcher who at least stood for what they believed in regardless of what people thought, are over. They were at least ethical.”
LMAO
@Dutchman: As one who lived for three and a half years in a Muslim country and has a goodly number of Muslim friends, I’d suggest you rethink your comment: there is much to admire in Muslim culture (which contributed no small amount to the development of the West) and in individuals who reject materialism and libertine behavior while making an effort to assimilate into a culture/society very different from that which they left for whatever reason. I left the land of my birth many years ago and have largely assimilated into the society of the village in which I now live while retaining many customs and behavioral norms of my native land, knowing as I do that when all is said and done, I will always be viewed by my neighbors as a “foreigner”. So be it. We coexist. Good fences may make for good neighbors, but mutual tolerance makes for better.
Much to be admired in the Muslim “culture”:
http://www.truthandgrace.com/muslimculture.htm
Bob.
@ COGDISNORM BIAS
I too laughed at the author calling that bunch ethical.
ADMIN- I posted on this earlier and the post never showed up, what’s up with that?
Bea Lever
I have no idea. I don’t moderate comments. You can say whatever the fuck you want.
Sometimes wordpress fucks stuff up. That’s life. Deal with it.
It’s not a conspiracy to silence you.
@Han Shan-na-na-na-na: When you look at Muslim countries:
Saudi Arabia: the 19 terrorists that took down the twin towers all Saudi. Where women can’t drive, can’t go out alone.
Iran – a terrorist state, calling for annihilation of Israel, killing all jews, hanging gay’s.
Iraq & Syria & Lybia more terrorism / beheadings
Pakistan – home of Bin Laden, sponsor of the Taliban and terrorism.
How about the ISIS dudes – how stupid – they capture an airport – then blow it up! All they know how to do is destroy. And this isn’t a small number of Muslims – it’s over 20,000 – how did this many get fucked up? Must be the religion.
It seems the first thing a Muslim thinks about is blowing something up.
Islam is a failed philosophy. It combines 11 century religion with a legal and political system.
Greece annually translates five times more books from English than the entire Arab world, and currently, 65 million Arab adults are illiterate. These sobering statistics are thanks to the U.N.’s first Arab Human Development Report published back in 2002
Spain translates more books from English to its language than the entire Arab world has in 1000 years—one thousand years. If this is the case with English to Arabic translations, imagine how few Spanish, French, Russian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, etc. are translated into Arabic. Not only is roughly 20% (1/5) of the Arab world illiterate, but for those who can read, the opportunity to read global literature is extremely limited.
I don’t give a fuck that Arabs invented decimal arithmetic – that was 1,000 years ago. Nothing has changed since then in the Arab world.
And they don’t work. Tell me the last time you bought something made in a Muslim country?
My uncle Bob used to say: Arab is just a Nigger turned inside out.
@Dutchman
Well, not all Muslims are Arabs for a start. Could well be that the shirt on your back was made in a Muslim country (Indonesia, once a Dutch colony, is Muslim and Pakistanis aren’t “Arabs”), but that’s beside the point. St. Thomas Aquinas relied upon “Arab” translations of Aristotle, much of the beginnings of medicine came from the Muslims, but when all is said and done, none of that matters in the face of one simple fact: neither you nor anyone else is in a position to stop the immigration of Muslims into the USA and Canada, because your masters have decreed it so. Better to learn to live in peace with those who arrive than set yourself up as the sort of person (the “Know Nothings”) who opposed the immigration of Catholics and then Eastern Europeans of Jewish extraction. The descendents of the “Know Nothings” now find themselves poor and marginalized in a society that once was “theirs” because they were unable to read the handwriting on the wall. Consider this: the new “queen” of the Netherlands is from Argentina. Get the picture? The globalists have the reins firmly in hand and their plan is to ride roughshod over folks like you. Abdul gets the picture and has decided to fight. How’s about you?
ADMIN- don’t get your drawers all bunged up. I was not pointing a finger at you, I realize things get fucked up, just thought you should know.
@Han Shan-na-na-na-na: I noticed you didn’t respond to any of the facts in my last post. It’s best to ignore the truth.
Who the fuck cares about St Thomas Aquinas. All you can talk about is 1000 yrs ago.
“Better to learn to live in peace with those who arrive” Look at France, England, Netherlands – Americans don’t want that.
“The globalists have the reins firmly in hand and their plan is to ride roughshod over folks like you” Yeah folks like us, and our ancestors: those who have educations, worked to make America, with an economy, roads, civil rights, I get the picture you want to waltz in here and get the ‘free ride’ – Well fuck you.
“Abdul gets the picture and has decided to fight” Me and a lot of other Americans know how to fight much better than you think.
DUTCHMAN, today you are on the side of American workers in lieu of muslims but yesterday you were ready to have half of American workers thrown to the curb in favor of friggin BOTS. I wish Abdul would go back home to whatever rock he crawled of from under too, but you are only loyal to your countryman to a point. Where was your compassion for those people to be replaced by the bots?
Exactly. If la- nana nana wants to hang onto his bullshit and hide behind his fence why doesn’t he fuck off back to the motherland. At a bare minimum he should never post here again cuz mostly nobody gives a shit about him or his agenda. He’s lucky the place is already built or he’d be blowing sheep instead of camels.
@shanana-“mutually tolerant” ?????? Surely you jest.
@Bea Lever: ” but yesterday you were ready to have half of American workers thrown to the curb in favor of friggin BOTS”
If your job can be replaced by a BOT – it ain’t a job let alone a career. Living in a northern state – I’d like to have gas station attendants – especially in January. But truly, you get your gas much quicker by doing it yourself and paying at the pump. Can you imagine having a gas station attendant with 16 – 20 pumps, it would take forever.
Look at grocery stores. 150 years ago you went to the store, the merchandise was behind the counter, and the clerk had to pick it. Then cam the idea of ‘self service’. Then came the realization that the customers could get quicker service with self check-out lanes. Also self check-out makes a supermarket competitive to a ‘quick shop’.
If a job can be replaced by a machine – then it’s an unproductive job. There’s no difference if we pay him to do an unproductive job or pay for his welfare check. It’s all about productivity.
Lastly, it’s economics: When you increase the price of an ‘input’ (like raising the minimum wage / Obola Care / etc ) the suppliers will look for a substitute.
the word “muslim” is already too much
DUTCHMAN- There are 248 million people people in this country eligible to work, ONLY 146 million are working at this time. Of the 146 million working , 86 million make less than 30,000 per year. Now, replace 10 million with bots. That will lower the income of the other workers and they don’t give a rat’s ass about your theories on economics. FOLKS is gots to eat brother., and again you are stating you don’t care what happens to them.
@Bea Lever: ” FOLKS is gots to eat brother., and again you are stating you don’t care what happens to them”
It’s not that I don’t care about them. Remember that nut case economist Krugman, and the broken window theory. It goes like this: break a window, and it’s good for the economy – people who make glass, those that sell it, and those that install it, it makes more work, so they get paid.
Say you go to Appleby’s and you get a $24 meal for two, and you leave a 15% tip – that’s $3.20. Now they replace the waiter with a self order system, and there’s just a food runner. You save the $3.20 tip. The restaurant will eventually save money paying less wages and FICA, and have less personnel hassles hiring waiters.
So the waiters are unemployed and they have to get SNAP, etc. Think about it: What’s the difference if we pay it in taxes or tips?
I can see ‘burger bars’ – you order your burger, then build it anyway you want. Sorta like a salad bar. You may have a fast food joint with 2-3 employees.
People are going to continue to innovate.
The real problem is that the only thing that counts is money. It’s almost impossible to live a simple life, and wages jobs are a bitch. Maybe we’re coming to the end of this cluster fuck system where people are constantly in debt.
DUTCMAN- The difference in paying the 3.20 tip and giving that guy a snap card is that (1) I rarely eat out, so you just signed ME up for a huge increase in my taxes- (I work to pay taxes now) Thanks a lot and (2) Are those peeps doomed to a life of snap card poverty until they are planted in the ground? and (3) FED toilet paper currency printing is footing the bill right now and that can’t go on forever. You are less than clueless.
@Dutchman
Sigh. “Education”? Pardon me, sir, but you are an ignoramus and vulgar in the bargain. I was born and educated in the USA, my ancestors (Irish and German) did quite well there, thanks, and I have a hated Ivy League education, but from long ago when it still counted for something. I suggest you and CA learn to read, because I am not a Muslim nor do I come from a Muslim country: I WORKED in one. I left the US long ago because I could see what was coming (and it has come) and now live a simple life elsewhere, thanks to investments that panned out.
I don’t think I’ll go away, given that there are a good number of intelligent, educated folk who post here and that Mr. Quinn writes well-reasoned essays as do a number of others. As to the “white trash” contingent, well, the US is full of ’em now, as Dutchman and CA demonstrate. I left 17 years ago because it was fairly obvious that the globalists would have their way with the USA and the jacklighted jerks like those referred above would eventually wake up to their condition, but even awakened, they have no idea how to deal with it or recognize who their real enemies are. I strongly doubt they ever will.
Muslims, like a plague wherever they go. Causing problems and not blending into whatever society they are in. I wish we would pull out of the middle east and let them kill each other off. The Jews would eventually help this happen. Im tired of Muslims. The media’s wussy reporting where they don’t want to offend Muslims by pointing out problems with them is annoying also.
@Han Shan-na-na-na-na: I really had no opinion or ill will for Muslims – until they completely destroyed their own credibility. Car bombs upon car bombs – of their fellow citizens, murderous suicide bombers – what other faith does this? Flying planes into the WTC. Burkas. Hanging gays. ISIS. Beheadings. All these people are muslims. The world has not seen any action by your so called moderate, peace loving muslims.
How about having the entire men’s room floor flooded cause these monkey’s need to wash their feet and pray 5 times a day. Christ some of them don’t even know how to use running water.
And you call me ” an ignoramus and vulgar ….”
” I left the US long ago …” ——————– Han Shan-na-na-na-na
Did you retire in a Muslim country?
I really want to know. I’m sure with your Ivy League education that you know why.
“peace loving muslims” ——- Dutchman
see, “oxymoron”
Han Shan-na-na-na-na
Why you no answer question?
Lima, Peru
Oh …. OK. So he just TALKS a good game about the lovely mooslim culture. But, live there? Noooooo!!! Just as I thought.