Tom Nichols: I keep saying it: The inability of people to comprehend the world around them has functionally severed the link between governing and elections. For a large group of people, literally nothing matters but the movie they're playing inside their own heads.

I keep saying it: The inability of people to comprehend the world around them has functionally severed the link between governing and elections. For a large group of people, literally nothing matters but the movie they're playing inside their own heads.

Harris Poll: 56% of Americans wrongly believe US is in recession--and most blame Biden: 49% believe the S&P 500 stock market index is down for the year (up ~24% in 2023 & >12% this yr) 49% believe unemployment at a 50-yr high (it's been under 4%, a near 50-yr low). 📈sociology polisky

Majority of Americans wrongly believe US is in recession – and most blame Bidenwww.theguardian.com Exclusive Harris poll for the Guardian shows 55% believe economy is shrinking, in troubling sign for president’s re-election bid

The death of shared collective facts has dire implications for so much. The merchants of denial, doubt, deflect, and despair succeeded in deluding people after staving educational systems of resources & flooding media systems with propaganda and biased infotainment. Amusing democracy to death.

Fox News is doing a brilliant job.

And for a scary amount of those people the movie is a John wick knockoff

I would argue it’s also the people they trust to give them their information. Half our country is being fed misinformation and eat it up because it supports their beliefs, truth be darned.

It's too facile to lay this off on right-wingers watching Fox. (If anything, ppl watching Fox business will know where the S&P is.) It's a bigger problem than that.

there's a divide between the "haves" (health insurance, home ownership) and the "have nots". even if lots of people are haves, they think (correctly) that they're on the edge of being pushed into the have nots. e.g., if their homeowners insurance gets cancelled, what are they going to do?

Well you know the catalyst of the epidemic gets outsized credit

The problem is that people are poor

But they aren’t. And they don’t think of themselves as poor. Majorities of people in this country think they’re doing just fine. They’re just dumb about facts.

Yeah, could it be that after 50 years of 90% of all GDP gains going to the owners, that the metrics used to measure how the economy is doing are no longer relevant to people who aren't billionaires?

Then why do majorities of people say their own personal finances are doing well? There's a gulf between what people say about the economy and how they see their own financial status.

There are always poor people, but what drives people nuts is the notion of relative deprivation. How come the other guy has granite countertops and four bathrooms? How come the other guy is driving a BMW?

I came here to say this, but would not have done as good of a job.

A lot of people I know have stopped watching MSNBC over the past 4 years or so. Turns out their business is getting folks all riled up about the "issue of the day." Exciting for a while, but accomplishes nothing besides making one upset all the time. They don't outright lie as much as Fox, but ..

It’s the focus of the media. Record low unemployment =money in people’s pockets. Money in people’s pockets = inflation. Inflation =fed rate hikes. Fed rate hikes = recession and less hiring (which didn’t happen.) what does the media focus on? Inflation, additional fed rate hikes and a “looming” rec.

It's not so much a movie as a first-person player game where everyone else is just an animation. And when did people start feeling proud of their ignorance, instead of driven to better themselves?

When a large segment of media influencers keep telling you “the deep state” and “lame stream media” are not to be trusted and that the reported facts are instead lies or propaganda then we end up where we are today.

Basically what is stated above, if true, confirms my theory that a vast number of Americans are as dumb as all get out.... which unfortunately fucks the rest of the world because it could mean the orange one gets elected in November

And the media echo chamber they immerse themselves in that reinforces it. The outrage machines are very good at what they do, and it is a very profitable business model. Reality no longer matters.

To me this poll says that disinformation campaigns work.

Okay, but the movie in their heads *is* subject to input. They are getting the script from somewhere, because they didn't all just imagine the same things independently.

Sure, and the media reports more bad news than good. But our brains are also wired to respond to bad news as permanent and good news as transitory.

And bad news as "happened to me" but good stuff is "I did this".

I wonder how many of the people who answered the poll get their worldview from FOX News or Newsmax or OANN, or talk radio.

people - real, average, everyday masses of people- are paying more and more for rent and basic necessities. That is ‘economy’. Telling them, telling US, that things are great, is a insult

That's inflation. That is one aspect of the economy. And inflation was pretty high for a while there, like 8-9%. But it's down around 3% now.

You can say what you like, but people are being pushed to the wall regardless. So what if the stock market is good?

Yeah, who cares about the stock market?

If your issue is rent, that is local politics. Also look at what has been done with the American Rescue Plan Act.

The question I want answered is whether this is new, or whether it’s just our detailed tracking of democratic ignorance that is new.

Always an issue, but it's become insane lately.

Do you honestly believe that Americans a hundred years ago had a better understanding of the national macroeconomy? It feels like it’s our baseline expectations of voters that have come unglued from reality. Modern democracy has *never* been based on a qualified electorate.

(I recently read Schattschneider’s The Semi-Soverign People for the first time, and found his case on this front compelling.)

I think it’s worse when you know everyone could look up information but they don’t.

Sad but true.

Why did it take so long to become supercritical? The relevant ignorance has been a thing since at least the end of WWII.

It’s not actually true. I wrote a book about it. But the short answer is that the real problem is not ignorance, it’s narcissism.

So the problem is not so much that people are watching the movie in their heads, it's that all the movies are different (because all of them are about basically nothing but the viewer).

Yes! I think that’s a good way to put it.

> I wrote a book about it This? www.google.com/books/editio...

Our Own Worst Enemywww.google.com A contrarian yet highly engaging account of the spread of illiberal and anti-democratic sentiment throughout our culture that places responsibility on the citizens themselves. Over the past three deca...

The economy is never terrific for regular people, and housing/groceries are way too expensive rn But this doesn’t explain the dissonance between satisfaction with personal finances vs satisfaction with the economy overall

someone criticized a FDR policy for ‘not working out in the long run’ & was told ‘people don’t eat in the long run. They eat every day all this YAY ECONOMY bullshit is a fucking insult to everyday people

I’m not sure how you can read my response as “yay economy” or a defense of Biden’s economic policy do you have an explanation for why people see the overall economy as bad, but their personal finances as good? shouldn’t “Prices are too high” have an similar effect on both those metrics?

A lot of time and money was spent misinforming these people.

Post