The Sheep Speak Up

Find out just how stupid/ignorant the American people are:

So how does the polled American think we should tackle the deficit issue? He knows that programs need cuts—tax hikes alone can't, and shouldn't, pull the country out of this mess. But he wants Washington to leave Social Security and Medicare well enough alone. And he hesitates to bring the ax to energy, health, or education programs. That said, he supports several provisions proposed by the president's debt commission—like shrinking the federal workforce, cutting federal salaries, closing overseas bases, and ending the tax deduction on home mortgage interest. And one program to really trim is America's generous foreign aid. The polled American thinks the government ships a quarter of our budget overseas, and thinks we should spend only $1 of every $10 helping out other nations. (In reality, the foreign aid amounts to less than 1 percent of the federal budget.)

One thing the polled American does not think the country needs is more bailouts. He hates bailouts. He wishes Barack Obama—it was him, right?—had not given all those bankers all that cash. They didn't need it. He's not big on those Timothy Geithner or Ben Bernanke cats, either, even if he does trust them on the economy more than you might think. He despises the Federal Reserve, even more than he hates the IRS. He thinks it's the Fed that needs auditing, though that might be because he hates the word federal. Those federal workers, for instance? He does not like them. He thinks they are overpaid and probably less qualified than private-sector workers. (He does love astronauts, though, and thinks we should send them to Mars.)

The polled American tends to think little of Congress and is lukewarm at best on the White House. Of late, she has reassessed the presidency of George W. Bush—and it looks pretty good compared with the Obama administration. (All in all, she likes Kennedy the best and Nixon the worst, as usual.) She can't shake the worry that Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim, even if she knows better. Then again, when asked by the pollmeisters, she tends not to be perfectly sure whether the sun revolves around the Earth, or the other way around.

Taking the long view, the polled American remains worried. She believes China has the world's strongest economy now. But despite her fears, the polled American remains characteristically sunny. Things are bad now, she says. But she believes the American Dream exists. She thinks she might even be living it. One way or another, she definitely thinks it is possible, with hard work more so than luck. Just don't ask her how to do it.

There can't be a nation more dissonant in what passes for its cognition, or more pathetic in its baseless pride.