A friend sent me this link to a quiz developed by Pew research. Twelve questions, virtually all of which should be easily answered by anyone who regularly follows national news.
The results, which are pretty appalling, may give us a clue to the ascendance of Donald Trump, not to mention the pathetic state of American politics today. After all, if you have no context within which to judge whether candidates’ positions are reasonable, or based upon an understanding of the issues involved, your vote is likely to fall into that category titled “uninformed.”
Here is the invitation to take the quiz. I particularly agree with the last line:
NEWS IQ TEST
This is a terrific test. And it shows results in a number of ways. It surely indicates that the majority of Americans don’t know what’s going on.
It’s astonishing that so many people got less than half right. The results say that 80% of the (voting) public doesn’t have a clue, and that’s pretty scary.
There are no tricks here — just a simple test to see if you are current on your information.
This is quite a good quiz and the results are somewhat shocking.
Test your knowledge with the challenge of 13 questions, then be ready to shudder when you see how others did:
If you get less than half correct, please cancel your voter registration.
My sense is that visitors to this blog are considerably more aware of what’s going on than the average American. Take the quiz and let me know if my intuition is correct.
When Tuesday’s primary results led to speculation about a brokered GOP convention, Donald Trump predicted (threatened?) that an effort to deny him the nomination would be met with riots.
It is harder and harder to avoid the parallels between the improbable emergence of Donald Trump and the social and political conditions that enabled Hitler’s rise.
I’ve always appreciated Godwin’s Law. Facile or offhand comparisons of contemporary bad behavior to the holocaust–a period in human history that remains inexplicable to civilized beings–is profoundly insulting; the effect is to trivialize atrocities.
But as Godwin himself recently noted, admonitions to be careful with analogies to Hitler and the Nazis should not be taken to mean that those comparisons are never apt.
I have always wondered how Hitler gained power. Where were the good people? How did a civilized, cultured population breed a movement of vicious, violent racial “overlords”?
Like many other Jews, my antennae are especially sensitive to intolerance and bigotry–but I’m also aware that I am at risk of overreacting to thoughtless comments or to the existence of hate groups composed only of a few damaged individuals who don’t represent a broader threat.
Back in December, CNN ran a very thoughtful article asking the question: is Trump a fascist? The author, Peter Bergen, goes through the precursors to and characteristics of fascism: a sense that the nation faces a crisis beyond the reach of traditional political solutions; the asserted superiority of the leader’s gut instincts over abstract and universal reason; the belief of one group (here, working-class white men) that they are victims, and that their victimization justifies extreme actions; the need for authority to be exercised by “natural leaders” (always male), culminating in a national ruler who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s destiny.
Bergen finds the Trump phenomenon squarely meeting those criteria. But he points to one characteristic that Trump does not share– “the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will when they are devoted to the group’s success.”
There is no hint that Trump wishes to engage in or to foment violence against the enemies, such as immigrants, he has identified as undermining the American way of life.
That may have been true when it was written, but it is clearly not true now.No one who has watched Trump deliberately fomenting violence at his rallies can have any doubt.
When he urges supporters to punch protestors in the face, when he promises to pay the legal bills of those who rough up hecklers, when the violence becomes so threatening that at least one rally has to be called off, when he speaks longingly of the days when “political correctness” didn’t prevent silencing dissent by beating up the dissenters or worse–the parallels are too close, too obvious to ignore.
And those calls for violence have been escalating.
A few years ago, one of Trump’s ex-wives reportedly said that he kept a volume of Hitler’s speeches on his nightstand. At the time, I dismissed the accusation as the product of divorce bitterness, but I believe it now.
I keep reminding myself that the United States is not Germany, and the year 2016 is not 1933. The differences matter. But the question we all face is: what can people of good will do to prevent a contemporary replay of one of history’s most horrendous periods?
A recent polling “primer” intended for journalists has some useful cautions for all of us being inundated with reports about the “latest polling results” in this weird campaign season.
We are always (usefully) reminded that even the best polls are but a snapshot of public opinion at the time the poll is fielded, so results depend upon what voters have heard and seen at that particular time. Subsequent campaigning can–and more often than not, does–change those perceptions.
It also should not be news that some polls are more equal than others: good polls are expensive, and a lot of what’s out there is at best unreliable and at worst, garbage. Composition and size of the respondent pool (the sample), design of the questions and a number of other flaws can make some surveys worse than useless.
But in addition to those standard cautions, recent changes in communications and the willingness of the public to answer questions cast further doubt on the accuracy of even the better-designed polls.
It should go without saying that “click on our link and tell us what you think” internet polls are worthless.
The increased use of mobile phones, especially, has challenged polling operations. That’s particularly true because there are significant differences in the populations that use cell phones and those who continue to keep their landlines, posing a huge challenge for the algorithms pollsters use to compensate for inability to reach mobile devices.
Further compounding the problem, the number of people willing to talk to a pollster when they are contacted has steadily declined; some estimates are that a mere 5% of those who answer their phones are willing to answer survey questions. Even if the number in the sample is increased in an effort to compensate, it is highly likely that the people who are willing to talk differ in some relevant ways from those who aren’t.
We saw the consequences of all this recently in the Michigan Democratic primary. The best polling has come a long way since “Dewey Beats Truman”–but most of what earns headlines isn’t the best polling.
The troubling aspect of this is that even garbage polls have the ability to affect people’s perceptions and ultimately, to affect election results.
This will be my final post about my personal odyssey with the fine folks at Anthem. It will be brief, just to update those of you who’ve been so kind with your suggestions and good wishes.
You will be happy to know that Anthem has made medical school unnecessary.
Yep–when they finally returned the multiple calls from the hospital doctors, and those doctors had once again gone through the charts, the X rays, the reports from in-hospital PT, etc., they were told that according to Anthem’s algorithm, I am not a candidate for rehab.
Their algorithm, you see, knows more about my condition and needs than the medical personnelwho actually examined and treated me.
As one doctor said, “why did I waste all that time in medical school?”
I’m going home. My younger grandchildren will come over to help my husband with my care, at least for a couple of days, and we’ll figure it all out. (As those of you who know me know, I’m a tough old bird.) But everyone in this situation–as you can see from the multitude of comments here on the blog and on Facebook–isn’t as fortunate as I am, doesn’t have a support network that can step in. And according to the doctors and caseworker, I am far, far from the only person facing this bureaucratic malpractice. And I will follow up on several of your recommendations for filing complaints, etc., in hopes that I can keep at least some others from going through a similar fiasco.
The United States is the only developed country in the world that has chosen to socialize its medical care through the insurance industry.
I asked one of the doctors if they have these same problems with Medicare. They don’t.
For now, this blog will return to its originally-scheduled programming.
As regular readers know, I’m in the hospital recuperating from a nasty fall. I broke my pelvis and my clavicle. I’ve been here 8 days, although the doctors wanted to send me to acute rehab three days ago. (Acute rehab is apparently more intensive, appropriate for people who have been active and can be expected to respond to longer sessions of physical therapy–and thus leave for home more quickly.)
This morning, I was finally supposed to be transferred. But then, Anthem, my “insurance” company (note the quotes) rejected the doctors’ advice and denied the move. According to the caseworker, since the first of the year, insurers have been denying approximately 50% of requested moves to acute rehab. Without seeing the patients, without consulting with their doctors. The hospital can and does appeal, and about half of those “peer to peer” appeals are granted–we’ll see what happens with mine–but even the appeal process evidently becomes a game; calls are routinely returned after hours, for example, when the insurance company knows the physician won’t be available, prolonging the process.
But here’s what is insane: keeping me in the hospital costs more than sending me to rehab.
Why would a company that should want to keep costs down opt for a placement that (1) is medically inappropriate; and (2) costs more? Why did the approval process suddenly become more arduous at the beginning of the year? What is the larger game being played in which I find myself a pawn? And what therapy will Anthem pay for? Anything? Or is my 83-year-old husband supposed to drag me up the stairs at our home and help me in and out of bed when nature calls?
