Dumb And Dumber

A friend forwarded me this article by Paul Craig Roberts. If you don’t know who he is, read his background information at the end of the article – you will be surprised. The article basically states that a majority of Americans do not understand information that is presented to them.

This is the dilemma that we on the left are faced with. In an era where up is down and down is up (healthy forests, clear skies, and terrorist surveillance instead of domestic spying), how do you frame an argument to those who do not focus on the issues?

We have all been in that situation. You can present facts and discredit what they (they meaning the uninformed) believe until you are blue in the face, but giving the uninformed an overload of information isn’t the solution. They didn’t question and didn’t research it before, why start now? Besides, we are fighting against the mainstream media. That’s 24 hours of talking points and using the administration’s sugar coated, kid tested-mother approved slogans as news stories. And when America needs a distraction from war or the economy, they look for missing dead white women.

Bill Clinton once said, “Those who think, vote Democrat”. I believe that there is truth behind that. How many times have you heard about an issue and decided to get more information on it? How many times have you Googled key words to get a little more background on a story? I would say that most of us do, but there is a big population of Americans out there who will take things at face value, and that’s where it ends. They read a headline and that’s the news. They are more interested in who wins the, “American Idol” competition than they are the House seat in their district. When it is election time, they base their decisions on sound bites and slogans (i.e. Swift Boats, flip-flop, voted against cutting taxes, etc.).

So, how do we get the disengaged, uninformed public on our side? It’s definitely not by overwhelming them with information. We need to learn how to speak at their level and we need to learn how to frame an argument in less than a sentence. We need to get them to understand that this administration is not looking out for them, they are only looking out for their own best interest. This is what we need to perfect by November of this year.