I have talked about the stupidity of using polling as a "story" for news purposes before. People are measuring opinions, but you can't measure facts. If an opinion is just wrong as to the facts, what did you learn? People might not answer honestly. They might be just vibing and have never thought about your question before. It might be useful for a news organization to see what sorts of things the public needs to be more educated about--but is it news?
Look, the above chart is from two years ago, about when I wrote the post I linked to. Yougov.com found that people wildly misestimate the size of various groups. When you see that people are estimating 21% of the population is transgender, bathroom panic starts to make more sense, until you ask yourself if people responding to the question even really understand fractions. Do people really think one out of five people are trans? Do they think like one in four are Muslim, and that one in three are atheist?
These numbers don't jibe with anything in people's actual lived experiences. What this poll shows is that people are innumerate. Their mental math is broken. They aren't converting their concept of how many people per are anything--they are just really bad contestants on "The Price is Right".
People also lie about their lived experiences. Or they have a poor concept of cause and effect. Take this chart for example:
So, a CBS poll found that the top priority among voters was lower prices. They also found that people understood that tariffs would raise prices. But they also wanted the tariffs anyway. Because reasons.
And forgive me, but I think I know what happened there. Folks were told tariffs raise prices--so they get that. But prices were lower under Trump, and he wants tariffs. So let's go with what Trump wants because prices were lower back when he was president.
Their number two concern was immigration. So help me , despite his being dead, why didn't people vote for Eisenhower (who has no felony convictions) and you could get Operation Wetback and a 10 cent cup of coffee?
So here's what Trump has actually announced--a 25% tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico. And if people don't know what fractions are, they don't know how badly that will screw them, but they don't actually know where food comes from, so? But here we go:
It's a lot of goddamn fruits and vegetables. And you know what else? Deporting a lot of our farm and food factory workers won't help food production here in the US.
What was supposed to happen under the policies that Trump told us he was doing out loud where we could hear him?
I honestly think that social media and cable news have made us so much dumber, because people just get pre-digested bit of information spit into their beaks like they are little baby birds. They don't ruminate over it. It's infotainment instead of being real.
I don't know how to fix it, I only know the news-to-brain system is fucked somehow And we have to get the people thinking again.
Make America Think Again! It MATAs!
UPDATE: Just a bitchy little reminder. Vote first, ask questions later.
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