Mark Collier

Disclaimer:  I’m not a Democrat or a Republican, and throughout the course of the campaign I supported one of each: Ron Paul in the primary (who frankly is the antithesis of the modern GOP), and then Obama (although his un-American FISA flip almost cost him my vote).  So I hope this post can meet a certain objective standard, even though that is of course impossible and it is a personal blog for fracks sake, so whatever…

Lemming Power

Merriam-Webster defines ignorance as

“the state or fact of being ignorant : lack of knowledge, education, or awareness”

I have always been intrigued by the power of collective ignorance in consolidating power for politicians, which of course provides a strong motive to mislead.  While being described as “ignorant” would certainly feel like a condescending personal attack (all too common in politics), in certain matters of well established fact it should be possible (without getting personal or ugly) to determine whether a commonly held belief is simply false.  And a large group holding that belief could then be accurately described as “ignorant”.

From there it’s fair to ask a couple of questions:

1) How did this group come to believe this falsehood?

2)  Who benefits most from their ignorance?

While one could probably bring down rackspace creating a list of false beliefs which have put (or kept) people in power, I will throw out a couple of examples that I believe are truly meaningful.  The type of ignorance that start wars, cost lives, and could determine who sits in the most powerful seat on the planet.

Example #1:  “Saddam was behind 9/11″.

I’ve always found it telling that so many people believed Saddam was behind 9/11, while at the same time support for the war was growing.  This seems like common sense, yet the media and pollsters rarely tie the two together explicity.  This seems like such an obvious connection.  After all, people who believed Saddam was behind 9/11 who also supported our invasion were not illogical.  On the contrary!  They were thinking very clearly and decisively.  They were just ignorant.

According to this article, “Polling data show that right after Sept. 11, 2001, when Americans were asked open-ended questions about who was behind the attacks, only 3 percent mentioned Iraq or Hussein. But by January of this year, attitudes had been transformed. In a Knight Ridder poll, 44 percent of Americans reported that either “most” or “some” of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Iraqi citizens. The answer is zero.”

Why the 1400% increase in ignorance?  And who had the most to gain from this ignorance?  This study attempts to prove the obvious answer scientifically, and for that I applaud them.   However, this may be one case where a study is a waste of time when the answer is so frelling obvious.  Bush could put any sentence in the world together, as long as it had “9/11″ and “Saddam Hussein” or “Iraq” in it, and the more he repeated it, the more this false connection would be solidified in peoples minds.  A dash of common sense tells us that.

This study gets closer to the heart of the matter, showing how strongly ignorance corresponded to support for the war:

“An in-depth analysis of a series of polls conducted June through September found 48% incorrectly believed that evidence of links between Iraq and al Qaeda have been found, 22% that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, and 25% that world public opinion favored the US going to war with Iraq. Overall 60% had at least one of these three misperceptions.

Such misperceptions are highly related to support for the war. Among those with none of the misperceptions listed above, only 23% support the war. Among those with one of these misperceptions, 53% support the war, rising to 78% for those who have two of the misperceptions, and to 86% for those with all 3 misperceptions. Steven Kull, director of PIPA, comments, “While we cannot assert that these misperceptions created the support for going to war with Iraq, it does appear likely that support for the war would be substantially lower if fewer members of the public had these misperceptions.”

They also show the influence of different media outlets on ignorance, but I will leave that for the reader to contemplate.

Example #2:  “Barack Obama is a Muslim”

Not Who You Think He Is (True, if you think he's a Muslim!)

I wish it could go without saying that there’s nothing wrong with being a Muslim, but that would be giving our citizens too much credit I fear.  I’d venture to guess that ignorance about what it means to be a Muslim runs just as deep as the misperception about which candidates actually our Muslim, but I digress.

According to this just-released poll, 23% of Texans believe Barack Obama is a Muslim.

In the same poll, it is revealed that 51% support Mccain and 40% support Barack Obama.  What they don’t connect, unfortunately, is the overlap between the ignorance and the candidate supported.  This is the same situation we faced in the run up (and aftermath) of the Iraq invasion:  Two highly related pieces of data that the media seems to avoid connecting explicity.

So, in the absence of real facts, I will just take the risk of showing my own ignorance by connecting the dots in some obvious, common sense ways.  If anyone has hard data to back this up, or challenge it, for the love of data please share!

Assumption:  100% of people who mistakenly believe Barack Obama is a muslim support Mccain.  Feel free to challenge the logic here, but it rings true to me.

Back of the Envelope:

Mccain (non-ignorant*):  28%

Obama:  58%

Mccain (ignorant*):  23%

*I’m sure we’re all ignorant about something, so this is just meant to capture those who are wrong about Barack’s religious beliefs according to the poll.  Deep Breaths.

I’m not trying to insult people who vote for Mccain (some of my best friends are Republicans, or so the saying goes, though most are voting for Obama) or to suggest in some high and mighty way that Obama’s supporters are smarter or don’t suffer from some powerful ignorance of their own that benefits him.

All I’m trying to say is that education matters, and if we don’t take a close look at the beliefs underpinning our support for people in power (myself included) we will end up starting wars we would otherwise oppose and have to live with the consequences.  There is too much at stake for such widespread ignorance to be in the drivers seat.

Hope that wasn’t too preachy.

Peace.