An Uneducated Electorate?
After the debacle of the first four years with President George W. Bush, I, and many others, were dumbfounded when he got re-elected. This is enough testimony in itself to substantiate the Q&A with Rick Shenkman, "The Ignorant American Voter" [June 23-30].
Shenkman says, "My No. 1 suggestion...is to ask every college [freshman] to take a current events quiz weekly." I also think that Shenkman missed an opportunity that would have real impact of future presidential elections. I think that all presidential candidates should take a quiz on current events, including world affairs and domestic issues. Then, the results of that quiz would be made public. Sen. John McCain would not score very well, and it would give us a better insight as to Sen. Barack Obama's ability to lead the nation.
Mel Rubenstein
Manlius, N.Y.
While Shenkman's suggestion of every college freshman taking a weekly current events quiz is laudable, it smacks of elitism and would be too little too late because not all students go to college and those who don't also need to be knowledgeable enough to vote. Since voting age is generally 18, this weekly quiz should be started in high school when civic interests, ideals, impressions and obligations are being molded. I can remember taking a weekly current events quiz in high school civics in 10th grade and in American government as a senior. I assumed all other high schoolers did too.
James W. Reynolds
Madison, Ala.
It must have taken a lot of courage for Rick Shenkman to write Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter. But this is a good observation. Americans are not interested in politics and care more about American Idols and other light fare. The worst part of it is that our elected officials and the media are aware of it and fully exploit it. Debates on TV talk shows are simply partisan politicians or "pundits" spewing propaganda. No depth, no enlightenment.
George Naniche
Moraga, Calif.
According to Rick Shenkman's book, 49 percent of the American electorate believes the president can suspend the Constitution. Perhaps they got that idea from the four Supreme Court justices who, for the most part, have been voting just that way! I've conducted discussions on the nature of democracy with students who are adamant that the right to vote is absolute, even for voters who are completely uninformed and whose vote might send us into war. Then I ask how they'd feel if they were accused of a capital crime and a juror stood up at the beginning of their trial to announce he was going home, would not listen to any evidence or witnesses and would just come back to vote guilt or innocence. That gets the thinking started.
Eric Fenster
Paris, France
Here we have, once again, a member of liberal arts academia, that profession someone once described as the last refuge of those who can't do or won't do, telling us common folk that we the people are too ignorant and too stupid to govern ourselves. We all need self-examination and criticism from time to time—even countries. But please, let us have it, with balance, and from those with accomplishment in the real world on their resume. Not those who have to publish or perish and therefore forever formulate such junk, year in and year out, in mountains of studies, just in order to say something, anything, however foolish.
Jack Gregory
Anderson, S.C.
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Reader Comments
People are LAZY, not stupid.
It's called the 'mob mentality'. People are, in general, too lazy and self absorbed to do the research and work necessary to make an informed decision in the voting booth. Instead they rely on the pundits, the talking heads and the propaganda to make the decisions for them, never realizing the extent of their folly.
"Polls say..." cry the headlines and people follow like vacant-faced sheep falsely believing that they must adhere to the will of the majority as determined by self-interested pollsters. The main trouble is that people BELIEVE the garbage spewed at us from all sides and, in their egotistical inertia, fail to use the one thing they have to decipher anything even remotely resembling the truth - their brain.
The American public isn't STUPID. It's LAZY. It lets self-interested parties tell them what to think and how to vote simply by appealing to the most basic of motivations. The politician or ballot issue with the most appealing catch-phrase wins. The sound-bite is the whole meal of thought for the average voter because they're too inert to get off their lazy butts and think for themselves. The truly sad part is they think, by listening to the same propaganda and thinking about it not at all that it somehow magically conveys wisdom in their choices when they don't realize it's ALL propaganda in the first place.
It doesn't. It never did.
And so we get mediocre choices and power-hungry politicians by the score because of it. God forbid the American voter actually gets motivated to explore the issues and learn about the candidates and do their own thinking for a change. American politics as we know it today couldn't survive it. The one thing a politician fears the most: An informed voter. They want voters who would rather feed from the teat of ignorance, to lazy to search for their own sustenance and swallowing all the drivel and BS the politicians hand out.
But I don't see the average American voter ever getting the motivation to do anything that requires real thinking, let alone in time for the next election. it's just too easy for them to let the politicians do their thinking for them instead of doing it themselves.
When the shoe is on the other foot, ha!
It's truly remarkable to read the comments of those that are adamant how stupid the electorate was for reelecting Bush. Couldn't the same argument be easily turned around on those that would vote for Obama? Each candidate has a constituency that the other side can easily dismiss because they lack something. It would be much more useful if supporters would give direct answers to the other side's complaints.
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