The Overlooked Irony of Jonathan Gruber's Candid Statements
................................................................................................................................
11/18/2014MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber has been captured on a number of video recordings stating that the Democrats relied upon and exploited the “stupidity of the American voter” to pass Obamacare. But American voters are not really stupid – not most of them anyway. Even the average Democrat voter is not stupid. Rather, Democrat voters are badly misinformed because they rely on the leftist media for information and opinion.
So what Gruber and the Democrats really exploited was not the stupidity of the American voter, but corrupt and dishonest reporting by leftist journalists.
Proof is that it was corrupt journalism which was what the Democrats really took advantage of is that voters who relied on the alternative media – internet news outlets, Rush Limbaugh, FreeRepublic, etc. – were not fooled. It was only Democrat voters who were fooled. The average reader of the NYT votes like an idiot precisely because he reads the NYT. His view of reality is distorted by the lies he reads and the unavailability to him of facts the NYT considers “inconvenient.” The same goes for CBSMSNBCABCWaPo, etc., etc.
The world is too complex for the average citizen to be fully informed on the details of every important issue. The fact that the average voter does not know, to take one of Professor Gruber's examples, the incidence of taxation on employer-provided health insurance, is not a reflection on the intelligence of the voter, but a reflection on the state of the press. The role of the press should be to report and disclosure the nature of the issues which the country faces. As is well known, the dominant, corporate, leftist press did not merely fail to report accurately on Obamacare, but affirmatively misled the public and suppressed the truth.
So this is the overlooked irony of Professor Gruber's disclosures: although he asserts that the Democrats exploited the stupidity of the average (Democrat) American voter, what they really exploited was the dishonesty of the monolithic leftist press. |
