The Educated Tea Bag

OK. We already know there are lies, damn lies and statistics. But this week's NY Times/CBS Poll of people who consider themselves part of the Tea Bag movement has generated some particularly bizarre contradictions.

The report summary says: "Fourteen percent of Tea Party supporters have a post-graduate education, compared with 10% for the general public. Twenty-three percent of Tea Party supporters have a college degree, compared with 15% for the general public, according to the poll."

However, the summary also notes, "Although the Constitution requires American presidents to be natural born citizens, as many as 30% of Tea Partiers say they think President Obama was born in another country and another 29% aren't sure." That's a total of 59% in the doubter column.

What colleges and grad schools did these people attend? Has a Tea Bag University been set up without our knowing it?

I can't think of even one post graduate degree holder I know who doesn't believe, or doesn't know if, the President is a natural born citizen. I did know one undergraduate degree holder who had doubts, but a few beers together and the threat of taking a belt sander to his face disabused him of the notion.

62% of Tea Party Activists believe the economy is getting worse in spite of the fact that the stock market has recovered almost 4,500 points since Obama has been in office. And employment figures, while unsteady, are on a definite up trend.

77% have a favorable view of Glen Beck, while 75% have a favorable view of Sarah Palin.

32% believe that violent action against the government is justified. (Maybe we should check THEIR birth certificates. Sound like enemy aliens to me.)

77% get their TV political news from Fox.

What person with a college or graduate degree could possibly name Fox as his or her primary news source? It's like naming Homer Simpson your favorite philosopher, except even Homer is right occasionally.

Of course, a vast majority of the Tea Baggers are "older" Americans, so one must take into account the possibility that their education ceased 50 years ago, or their brains have actually been eroded from all that tube time with Fox.

In Animal House, Flounder is admonished that "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life."

To the Tea Baggers: "Misinformed, angry and scared is no way to spend your twilight years."

Are We Less Well-Informed Than We Used To Be?

First, I'd like to say that I am not planning to fully answer this question, but rather put a bit of perspective on it and offer one possible solution. Someone recently sent me an article from September, 1999 from Salon.com. It makes the head spin. (There's a "reward song" at the end of this post that will stop said head from spinning too much.)

Here are some pull quotes from the various studies in the Salon article:

On a typical election day, 56 percent of Americans can't name a single candidate in their own district, for any office.

A poll by the nonprofit Pew Research Center, released in 1999... showed that 56 percent of Americans could not name a single Democratic candidate for president. Things weren't better for the Republicans: Only 63 percent could recall the name "Bush."

One month after the Republican revolution in 1994, in which conservatives, led by Newt Gingrich, finally took control of the House of Representatives, 57 percent of the electorate did not know who Gingrich was.

Nor is this a new development or the product of young minds warped by MTV. In 1964, at the height of the Cold War, only 38 percent of Americans could say for sure whether the Soviet Union was a member of NATO.

A 1996 Washington Post-Harvard survey found that “only 26 percent knew the 6-year term of office of a U.S. senator” and less than half the public knows that a member of the House of Representative is elected to a two-year term.

Although surveys were not methodically taken then, we know anecdotally that an outcry over such ignorance was raised as long ago as the 1870s.

Naturally, ignorance was more understandable in the 19th century because information was more difficult to obtain, and campaigns of misinformation less developed, and perhaps issues were less confusing. (Although the reaction to slavery was certainly not uncomplicated.)

Blind ignorance had been going on for generations apparently though. James Madison warned:

A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. 

I think there is a larger discussion to be had, however. Dilution.

In 1910 when there were 391 members of the House, each represented about 236,000 people. Today, its 435 members represent an average of 707,000 people, a dilution factor of 3 over the course of the last 100 years. (In 1820, the number was around 6,000 - small enough so a Representative could know every enfranchised voter by name!)

Worse off is senatorial representation in many modestly populous to very populous states. Wyoming, the least populous state, has 544,000 people represented by two Senators. California has 37 million. How close can citizens in a big state realistically hope to get to a Senator's decision-making process? 

Finally, across the breadth of the entire country, we still only have 9 Supreme Court Justices, the same number as in 1869. (The Court has gone from as few as 5 members to as many as 10 in its history.) No wonder liberals and conservatives so often feel frustrated, angry and betrayed by many of the Court's decisions. Of course, Justices are not supposed to be strictly representative of the electorate, but it bears mulling over that there is only one of them for every 34 million of us. Could they possibly be reflective of a huge, diverse population? I think not.

A liberal take on this imbalance would see the House grow by at least double, and the Senate completely re-apportioned, while still ensuring some sort of voice for small states. (I can feel a rant about my views on the filibuster welling up, so I will wind this post down.) And the Supreme Court could certainly be expanded to 17 or 19.

People unarguably are ignorant about politics. But, we grow farther and farther away from a reasonable connection with their Federal representatives with each year of new population growth. Why keep attuned and informed when you feel so out of touch?

Chain of Fools - Aretha Franklin