But every once in a while a fresh factoid like the Obamacare ignorance comes along to remind us that we're out to breakfast and dinner as well. And it adds an important, infrequently acknowledged bit of perspective to all the commentary, from us journalists and from political strategists alike, about how voters behave and whom they reward. We purport to interpret an informed, rational universe, because we'd undercut our own insights if we purported anything else.
But only limited sense can be made of what is often nonsensical, and the truth is that a great big chunk of the electorate is tuned out, zonked out or combing Roswell for alien remains. Polls over the last few years have variously shown that about 30 percent of us couldn't name the vice president, about 35 percent couldn't assign the proper century to the American Revolution and 6 percent couldn't circle Independence Day on a calendar. I'm supposing that the 6 percent weren't also given the holiday's synonym, the Fourth of July. I'm an optimist through and through. Here's one of my favorite findings: in a poll in 2011, after intense, closely chronicled fiscal battles in California, a sampling of the state's residents were quizzed about which category of spending accounted for the biggest share of California's budget. Only 16 percent correctly said public education through the 12th grade. And they did this poorly in spite of being given just four possible answers, including the correct one, from which to choose. They more or less underperformed the odds.
Apart from perennial news stories about how many Americans would flunk the citizenship test that immigrants must pass, we mostly gloss over our ignorance or deny it. Election analysts are constantly saying that voters are "too smart " for some ploy or "smarter than " they get credit for being. And there's a whole subgenre of nonfiction that assures us that we shouldn't be spooked by how uneducated we are.
Abortion has been an issue that has bothered me, ever since I moved to Texas. Texas being a conservative and pro-life have voiced out against the feticide and attacked abortion clinic and doctors. A friend of mine underwent an illegal abortion from fear of being kicked out of her church and family. ...