Thanks to my pop for this article: The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Voting Without the Facts
I think a case could be made that ignorance played at least as big a role in the election’s outcome as values. A recent survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that nearly 70 percent of President Bush’s supporters believe the U.S. has come up with “clear evidence” that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda. A third of the president’s supporters believe weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. And more than a third believe that a substantial majority of world opinion supported the U.S.-led invasion.
This is scary. How do you make a rational political pitch to people who have put that part of their brain on hold? No wonder Bush won.
The article goes on from there, talking about the media’s take: all values, all the time. No wonder people are making sites like sorryeverybody.com….
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now i’m as hopelessly depressed and righteously angry over the results of the american election as the next liberal elitist agnostic (and if, like me, you’re still recovering, i don’t recommend you visit the ‘answer’ site to “we’re sorry” – http://www.werenotsorry.com), but i don’t know if the poor and poorly educated should bear the brunt of the blame – american media’s taste for soundbites (in places where ‘media’ = the ‘bill o’reilly on the way to work’) coupled with the manipulative skills of karl rove mean that people without the leisure time or means to conduct ‘independent research’ are fairly likely to trust their president and their radio and their fox news. not quite an excuse, but…
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