Are Americans total numbskulls?
God help us. Could so many Americans really be that dumb, ill-informed, paranoid, gullible and goofy? It must be tricky being Barack Obama, winding down the U.S. presence in volatile Iraq, trying to keep Afghanistan from degenerating, pondering war with Iran, even as, according to the latest bulletin, one in five Americans thinks he is a Muslim.
Why not just believe he's an alien from outer space? Or a Manchurian Candidate, programmed by, say, the Chinese to bring America to ruin?
Crazy times.
It's also dismaying that so many Americans are opposed to the mosque near Ground Zero. In America you can worship wherever you want, regardless of religious belief. We protect religious minorities here. This isn't merely the law: It's a core value. This goes back to the Pilgrims, I seem to recall. The backers of the mosques are the good guys, the ones who preach tolerance. There should be no hedging on this at all from American leaders: If we can't allow a mosque in lower Manhattan we might as well close shop for good and turn out the lights.
A lot of times, polls are deceiving, through vague wording, or perhaps by not giving people enough information to start with. For example, the question about the mosque may not have been framed in a way that made clear that this would not be a place to advance the cause of radical Islam, jihad, death-to-the-West, etc. But it's hard to see how the Obama question could be confusing. Obama is a Christian, and famously attended a Christian church led by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whom no one would take for a Muslim.
What this shows is that disinformation remains powerful and infectious, and that large elements of the country distrust the official story about anything. People assume, as the starting point on any issue, that they're being lied to. Maybe they want to believe that because it offers an explanation, of sorts, for why the world isn't the way we think it ought to be.
By Joel Achenbach | August 19, 2010; 8:49 AM ET |
