Where Do You Stand?
This headline, “Don’t Be a Dummy!,” is sincere. The sad truth is that too many Americans act like “dummies” too much of the time.
For example, consider the following quote:
“Public Policy Polling asked a broad sample of Democratic and Republican primary voters whether they would support bombing Agrabah. Nearly a third of Republican respondents said they would, versus 13 percent who opposed the idea. Democratic preferences were roughly reversed; 36 percent were opposed, and 19 percent were in favor. Agrabah doesn’t exist. It’s the fictional country in the 1992 Disney film Aladdin. Liberals crowed that the poll showed Republicans’ aggressive tendencies. Conservatives countered that it showed Democrats’ reflexive pacifism. Experts in national security couldn’t fail to notice that 43 percent of Republicans and 55 percent of Democrats polled had an actual, defined view on bombing a place in a cartoon.”*
Another way to explain this is that too many of us act like dummies when it comes to current events.
How? First, we too often allow ourselves to hold and express kneejerk opinions on things without studying them and learning even the most basic details.
Second, we are frequently sure we’re right in our opinions, even when we’re just expressing careless views without studying any of the facts.
Third, we too often choose the lazy path when a 30-second search of a topic, or in this case a world map, would tell us that Agrabah is a fictional land from a cartoon movie. Too many Americans** do this kind of thing over and over, often without even realizing it. This isn’t an issue of conservative or liberal, red or blue. It’s a simple matter of assuming we know things instead of immediately saying “I don’t know” and then just bothering to look it up.
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