Is the US equipped for democracy?

Being misinformed about the economy does not equate to "being intelligent enough" to have a democracy. This came very close to getting my first off topic rating for a first post in a thread.

 

just shows how bad the misinformation is and how poorly the democratic party has done in getting the message out.

sadly, perception seems to be more important than reality to many too many people

 

This is a product of 2 things,
First. Silo’d news. Good luck breaking through that bubble.
And then a complete lack of historical knowledge. The average American wouldn’t have a clue what unemployment rates were in the 1992 recession, or the Carter years for example.

it’s also a broader warning sign for Dems, it’s a function of a whole lot of people really struggling right now and projecting that into how they view the world. If you are struggling to pay the bills, you likely aren’t caring what the stock market did, you don’t have any money there. If you did you wouldn’t be struggling. And worse, it hits the dem’s demographic as bad or worse than the pubs.

 

I fear we've become too stupid and too easily manipulated to have a democracy. We'll find out in November.

 

Be interesting to know how long this poll has been being conducted and what the prior results were.

 

What is interesting is that you are seeing a pretty firm split in how people are doing themselves and how they are perceiving others are doing. The Fed just released a poll demonstrating this. In terms of own finances, 72% believe that they are personally doing well, higher than 2013-2016 and relatively consistent with the 2017-2022 time period, which is largely in the 70s. Meanwhile, 42% believe their local economy is doing well and 22% believe the national economy is doing well. Both of those later two dropped by about 20-25% during the pandemic and never recovered. The more abstract the question, the worse people perceive the situation.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/publ...-economic-well-being-us-households-202405.pdf

 

I hope Biden steals the election.

 

Murdoch media and anything else like it should never have been allowed on the air here.

Remember, if you have older people in your life and you visit them, put Fox News on a parental lock with only a passcode you know so they can't access it.

 

Let's get the straw man BS " we are a republic and not a democracy out of the way" and move on to the actual topic the OP is addressing.

We need an educated, informed, and involved citizenry to be an effective democracy ( republic). When a significant portion of the populace no longer believes in the tenets and principles of our form of self governance, we have a serious problem. Yet, here we are.

 

Yes, Fox News deserves the blame for American rage - Kevin Drum

 

I would prefer it if we went back to news distribution from 1977. 3 network evening news for a half hour and then maybe some game shows then Battlestar Galactica.

 

This is my biggest fear for our future. Fewer and fewer people are seeking truth. Finding something that confirms what one wants to be true is good enough. But then they are making important decisions based on this false information. And there are some people who are purposefully feeding this to make short term gains.

If we can't agree on reality, there is no way for us to work together to move forward. It was hard enough when we couldn't agree on which way to go, now that we don't even agree on where we are, it is nearly impossible.

 

Tomato Tahmahto. One man's belief in our form of self governance is another man's tyranny. Colorado cake baker comes to mind.

 

We dismiss all that at our peril. take things for granted much?

 

I learned that in my 10th grade economics class.

 

One of the ironies is that when the Reagan Administration's FCC eliminated the equal time/Fairness doctrine it was based on the rationale that there is no need to enforce a fairness doctrine since there are many more media sources providing alternative viewpoints rather than the just the three networks. The effect of that decision was that the American public ended up siloing themselves with media echo chambers and becoming much less informed with the problem being compounded by social media a couple of decades later.

 

Democracy?

Who's uninformed?