Thursday, August 19, 2010
A recent poll showed that approximately 1 in 5 Americans believe President Obama is a Muslim. I don't usually agree with the phrase "history repeats itself", but having studied 19th century American history this is a little too eerily familiar. We've certainly come a long way as a people from fearing Catholic plots to overthrow the government, Zionist movements to control the world, and freed African Americans running away with white women (for any of you 1 in 5 out there who by some long shot read this, I'll explain because I am sure it is necessary: that was sarcasm).
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"Forty-three per cent of those questioned said they did not know what Mr Obama's religion was."
ReplyDeletein other words, 43% answered correctly. the correct answer is that it doesn't matter, er, shouldn't matter. blah blah, sep. of church and state, blah blah blah.
on a somewhat related note:
as his approval rating slips i like to think that it is due to people not understanding what the president actually does (is capable/allowed to do) and not knowing what (if anything) he has done so far.
e.g. i never knew this:
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/84/i49/8449regulation.html
luckily the obama administration fixed the glitch in 2009:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/11/AR2009031103852.html
point is, i don't know enough to properly evaluate our president and i know a fair amount. that, to me, says that any approval "rating" can really only be binary: does more than half the population approve or not?
i do know that he's not a muslim. that's not misinformation — that's straight up bullshit.
You are absolutely correct in that it shouldn't matter, although my impression was that the 43% who responded as "unsure" were essentially saying that he could secretly be a Muslim: an answer that doesn't make me much more comfortable with America's paranoia over trivial issues. Obama has attended Christian churches regularly for two decades now, and the fact that people are still "unsure" as to what his religion is tells me that a majority of those who responded that way believe there is credibility to the "secret Muslim trying to overthrow the United States from within" conspiracy. I really hope that that 43% consists mostly of people who simply don't care, but the cynical side of me believes most of those responses are nothing more than slightly more level-headed conspiracy nuts. To me it is not about whether or not he is a Muslim (which in my opinion is irrelevant), it is more of an issue of people asking a question and then ignoring reality when confronted with the facts of that question.
ReplyDeleteAs for his approval ratings, there always seems to be a reaction against the party in power in between presidential elections. I agree that most people don't know what the president does/has done. Stanek: considering the drop in approval ratings for health care reform, have any of the proposed changes even come into effect yet to even give people something to gripe about?
Mostly no. I'll post something about reform implementation soon.
ReplyDeleteIn the meantime, if you really want to get depressed about how dumb Americans are, read through this.