16 of the Dumbest Things Americans Believe

[nobody]

I thought this was funny.

http://www.alternet.org/story/148826/16_of_the_dumbest_things_americans_believe_--_and_the_right-wing_lies_behind_them/

"But while the right wing is taking full advantage of this reality, the Left worries that calling out lies is 'rude.'"

Let the rudeness begin!

"President Obama is hesitant to speak up when he’s being slandered with bald, glaring untruths."

Like just about every other president, he doesn't speak up for much except himself.

"It feels like no one with a loud enough megaphone has the courage to call a spade a spade, or more accurately a lie a lie."

Anyone got a megaphone?

"Polling data during and after last week’s midterm elections suggested that many Americans genuinely believe President Obama has raised their taxes -- even though the reality is that our president actually lowered them for most of us. "

Who cares? Taxes are involuntary donations, which is a nice way of saying "stealing".

"Half of new Congressmen don’t believe in the reality of global warming."

Most of them don't believe in the reality of anything except their own behinds.

"The new Congress will probably try to restore millions of dollars of funding for scientifically inaccurate, largely disastrous abstinence-only curriculum in schools."

Rather than abstinence from procreation, I propose a "Don't Create More Morons" curriculum, bu maybe that's too radical for most people.

"News outlets picked up a wildly inflated and completely outlandish claim from an Indian blog that Obama’s trip abroad cost $200 million a day..."

Stop watching "Brewster's Millions", dammit! It was just a movie!

"While some of them are garden-variety lunacy, a surprising number are lies that were fed to Americans by our leaders on the far-Right."

Who cares where they came from? If you believe that condoms don't work and abortion causes cancer just because someone said so, you deserve to be ridiculed for lacking brain function. Maybe it'll embarrass you into doing your own thinking from now on.

"Nearly one-fifth of Americans think Obama is a Muslim."

Yes, he is. In some universe, somewhere.

"25 percent of Americans don’t believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution..."

The problem with this statement is that this lack of belief is not compared with a corresponding presence of belief in other theories. In addition to evolution by competition and creationism, there are other - scientifically valid - theories. So if you don't believe in Darwin's theory, so what? That doesn't say anything about your intelligence.

"A majority of “young Americans” cannot identify Iraq or Afghanistan--the places their peers are fighting and dying--on a map."

Aren't those places, like, next to Korea and Australia?

"So it seems those right-wingers clamoring to tear down the wall between church and state aren’t the only ones who don’t know their constitutional principles."

For not the first time, I'm considering hanging a framed copy of the US Constitution on the outside of my front door, with the caption HOUSE RULES.

"Many Americans still believe in witchcraft, ESP and other supernatural phenomena."

Again, not an indicator of intelligence. Rational agnosticism about these things, though, is for me an indicator of higher intelligence. Belief that ESP definitely does not exist indicates to me a mind that is small and closed. I don't "believe" in it myself, but I admit that I do not know whether, how or why it exists. Weird shit has certainly been observed.

"Speaking of antiquated religious beliefs, about a decade ago, 20 percent of Americans still believed that the sun revolves around the earth."

Shit, it doesn't?

"This one made a huge splash when it appeared. In 2006 more Americans were able to name two of the “seven dwarves” than two of the Supreme Court justices."

Oh, come on. I don't give a flying doughnut about the Supreme Cunt - uh, Court justices. Justice in this country is a sham. All hail the Seven Dwarves!

"More Americans can identify the Three Stooges than the three branches of government..."

Now that's just fucked up.

"...conservative commentators, told (voters) Barack Obama was a tax-mad lunatic. They lied. The mainstream media did not do their job and correct them. "

Since when was "mainstream media", at least in modern times, known for accurate journalism anyway?

"Folks on our end have to counter the lies with well-told, unabashed unironic, truth-telling."

Wrong. If you have a populace that has been taught to think for themselves, morons can lie all they want and still be told to shut up and sit down. Why propagate the belief that it's "someone else's job" to think for you? That's just insane. Don't look to politicians to do it, DIY! We here on EM know about DIY!