This is what we're fighting: ignorance

On another thread Matt Damon questions whether Sarah Palin actually believes the earth is "4000 years old". http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x185871

What he doesn't realize is how prevalent this view is in this country. It's indicative of our problem
and why so many people think Palin is great.


You cannot reason with people who don't accept science, fact, history, documentation. They "believe"
and that belief is good enough for them.

From the source:


If you've a mind to put a blue state/red state, slicks/yokels spin on matters, the polls offer lots of ammunition. A 2005 Harris poll reported that 73 percent of Republicans believed in creationism as opposed to 58 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of independents. (The numbers are higher across the board likely because of phrasing that, again, seemed to equate creationism with belief in God.) This poll also found that people in the northeast and west were much less likely to believe in creationism than those in the south and midwest, and that people over age 55 were much more likely to believe than those under.

<snip>

How does the U.S. compare with other countries in terms of belief in evolution? Not so hot. A study of attitudes in 34 countries published in Science in 2006 shows that the United States ranks last in popular acceptance of evolution except for Turkey. Almost 40 percent of Americans in this study flatly rejected evolution, whereas the comparable numbers in European countries and Japan ranged from 7 to 15 percent.




http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2680/nearly-half-the-u-s-population-believes-the-earth-is-less-than-10-000-years-old


This problem, that ignorance is so prevalent in this country, and that so many people are proud of
their ignorance, is one of the reasons that I fear we're going to see a very close election--one that could easily go McCain/Palin. It makes me sick to think that is how far this country has drifted
from the roots of the founders. Absolutely sick. I fear that unless we have an economic dislocation
prior to the election that forces these people in the south and midwest to wake up and smell the coffee, we will simply see a repeat of 2000/04 and an election close enough for the Repubs to steal.

I'm in the South. Thankfully, I have been smelling the coffee since 2001. Of course, that was when I was 17, so it didn't matter until 2004. :)

It is WILLFUL ignorance, and you can't fight that. All you can do is manipulate them better than the right does.

Willful ignorance.

Sorry to keep hammering away at this, but I think it's the key to everything.

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

but this country is loaded with idiots.