Sure, in some vague and easily-manipulated way polls can show us how a small sample of people think about a certain issue. And by "think" I mean never seriously consider the issues until someone asks them to tick a box on a preset number of choices, as if there is something fucking scientific about the difference between "likely" and "somewhat likely" or some other meaningless weasel words.
Even if Jesus Christ had a pow-wow with Albert Einstein and came up with an infallibly perfect set of poll questions, polls get conducted over the phone and have no consequences, so people are free to say whatever the fuck they want or whatever they think the pollster wants to hear.
We have elections. This is not ancient Greek-style mob democracy (if you want that you'll have to move to California). Let's give some credit to the Founders who wanted, more than anything, to make sure they avoided majority-mob rule, both out of philosophical logic and because, being smart fucking elitists themselves, they knew that people--not,necessarily individually but as sheep-like herd--are too fucking stupid and easily swayed to make complicated governing decisions themselves.
Elections have consequences. We elect politicians to make decisions. We elect them based on a variety of factors, including but not limited to their positions on issues and their general decision-making acumen. We can write letters to them once in office, we can organize to make sure they hear our voices. We can do actual, real things to let politicians know how we think about issues. Or we can sit back and let paid scumbags whip together pseudo-scientific bullshit to convince politicians of what we really think.
For fuck's sake, gimme an hour and I can word some poll questions guaranteed to get you any result you want--and even if I don't get it I can twist the results to mean anything I want.
Poll: Am I unlikely, somewhat likely, or very likely to kick a fucking pollster in the nuts if I ever actually meet one?
No comments:
Post a Comment