• shalafi@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    1 day ago

    You’d probably be shocked at how ignorant most Americans are. See those man-in-the-street interviews Mamdani had with NYC Trump voters? They seemed to know nothing about Trump, just had vibes.

    If you get your news and political views from FaceBook, you’re going to be ignorant as hell. And if you throw Fox News in, you’ll come out knowing even less.

    On top of all that, over half of Americans top out at a 6th-grade reading level. 20% are flat out illiterate. Can’t find the stat again, but an appalling number of us can’t follow along in a novel.

    We can’t fix anything in this country until we fix education. How can we even speak to people about climate change, collapsing ecosystems, repeating 20th century history, anything at all, when they don’t have a basic education?

    • DarkFuture@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 day ago

      I totally agree that most Trump voters simply know nothing about him. I maintain an acquaintance with a Trump supporter kind of just out of curiosity and they know incredibly little about him as a person, or the things he’s doing as president. They’re generally just unaware. He didn’t even know that Trump abused emergency powers to bypass Congress to impose tariff taxes on Americans.

      But that doesn’t mean they aren’t a bad person. Not engaging with the democracy you live in and ensuring that it remains healthy makes you a bad person, in my opinion. Too many people sacrificed their lives to give us democracy and not engaging responsibly is unbelievably disrespectful and makes you a bad person. Voting for someone without knowing anything about them makes you a bad person.