To Duh, or not to Duh? That is the Question

In Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, (1890), Lord Henry Wotton says to painter Basil Hallward, "[B]eauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid."

How right Lord Henry was, and The American People™, I'm delighted to report, are apparently in entire agreement with him. Thinking, you see -- especially thinking about political affairs and the basic facts of economics, who's controlling one's government, and all that sort of dryasdust thing -- is very bad for the profile, and perhaps even unhealthy for the constitution. It makes a person unattractive and unhappy.

What else is a body to gather from such polls as the recent one from Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, referenced in its article, Public Knows Basic Facts about Politics, Economics, But Struggles with Specifics? (This is a poll I saw mentioned in a Nov. 20, 2010 HuffPo article entitled, Less Than Half The Nation Knows That GOP Took Back The House: Pew Poll.) It would appear that in spite of all the hoopla on and about November 2, fewer than half of us managed to soak up the knowledge that the GOP had in fact retaken the House of Representin'. Perhaps it's just protective self-denial, but Democrats did even worse than Republicans on that issue, and in general the liberal performance on a spate of questions was nothing to kick up one's donkey-heels about.

The impression I got from this poll is that Democrats are impressively uninformed about an impressive variety of things, while Republicans are slightly less impressive in that regard, which of course only means that since they're a bit more "with it" on the basics, they must as a group be diabolically obtuse, given how often they're dead wrong when it comes to policy. And as for the Youth of America, well, don't ask -- apparently, the majority of those vacuous tossers couldn't give you their correct ages, let alone tell you which party won the House earlier this month.  (As Bill Maher might say, "Oh, I kid the Youth of America, I kid them affectionately....)

Polls like this always make me splutter a sip or two of my morning coffee, even though they're by no means a genuine surprise. All I can say is, if we want to remain a republic, we have to show a little initiative and think for ourselves, keep ourselves informed. Most people are harried, just trying to keep their heads above water. Even so, democratic-spirited forms of government require at least a minimum of with-it-ness from the people if they're to keep themselves going. If "don't have a clue" is the default response to all things political, ours is in serious trouble: easy pickings for the next demagogue, the next traders in fear and loathing, the next set of corporate-interest-servicing, elective-office-seeking power-grabbers. There must be at least a healthy-sized enlightened minority to keep things viable, people who may be all nose or all forehead (or all snout, in my case) but who have some idea which party is in charge of things, what's been done or is about to be done and by whom to whom, and all that not-as-much-fun-as-reality-TV rot.

Well, that's quite enough pontificating from this ignorant lizard. You can read the Pew poll for yourselves and come up with your own answer as to whether we are doing ourselves proud or descending rapidly into a Republic of Duh.  I have to go water my potted plants with some nourishing sports drink, just like the post-intelligence farmers make the crops flourish in Idiocracy.

Preaching to the Choir

Election dialog is of most value when we are spreading the word as opposed to preaching to the choir. There are web sites that the average public posts to and those sites feed information to many people. I believe we need to flood those sites with our opinions. Brief statements, simply stated, that point out the obvious.

For example, the home page on AOL had an article about Biden's comments concerning taxing the rich. http://news.aol.com/elections/article/biden-calls-taxes-patriotic-for-rich/179323 Following the article was a straw poll containing two questions. One question asked if the rich should be taxed more heavily than the rest of us. 55% of the respondants answered yes. Yet, the second question asked whose economic policies were supported more. Over 60% said McCain. Hello? At the end of the survey is an opportunity to blog a response. I did so. We need to bombard these straw polls and respond to educate consumers.