1. A Sensational Poll, Should We Be Alarmed?
Well, here's a question? 84% of Americans are 'greatly divided' when it comes to 'the most important values.' Should we be alarmed? My categorical answer is an emphatic No. Here's why...
Well, here's a question? 84% of Americans are 'greatly divided' when it comes to 'the most important values.' Should we be alarmed? My categorical answer is an emphatic No. Here's why...
2. I do not doubt that the poll accurately reflects the answers to the questions as posed, but the questions seem pretty much designed to elicit the answers they get: "The way things are going," "state of politics," "the most important values" (without specificity as to what).
3. The underlying sensation that this is supposed to engender is a fear of an impending civil war. A civil war over what? I bet some of the people answering the question about division over the "most important values" had gender-neutral bathrooms as one of their prized values.
4. What 24/7 cable and social media shenanigans have engendered in us is a hyper awareness of how divided we are in terms of our respective interpretation of common and even bland facts in such diametrically opposite and charged ways. Is this new and alarming?
5. Hyper awareness of it all is new, but nothing else is. People have been divided in the way they use individual filters to interpret perceived reality since time immemorial. On matters of political philosophy and expedience, even our founding fathers were extremely divided.
6. We went to a civil war over a "deep in the soul" matter of moral repugnance, not over a matter of philosophical disagreements. Mindless merchants of sensationalism cannot sell every ideological tic as a morality play. Most people know the difference intuitively.
7. Still, who is to say my interpretation isn't a rosy colored one, and we are actually headed toward a civil war? Well, let us find out. It's not that hard when you think about it.
8. All you have to do is to add one simple question to any survey: "Are you personally willing to go to a bloody civil war in the streets over <fill in the blank>?" Think about laying down your life and those of your loved ones tomorrow over this or that.
9. What do you think the survey result will be? I will get worried when such a survey result shows more than 10% Yeses (there are always some nut cases who will say yes to anything sensational, just for kicks).
10/x. I doubt such a survey will even be conducted by any self-serious media outlet, because it will blow away their game of constantly keeping people on edge for ratings. But until I see such a poll, I find polls showing "deep divisions" as cheap parlor tricks of no consequence.
