A Problem with Public Opinion Surveys

The notion that a multiple-choice opinion survey will render valid results is highly questionable.

Let’s imagine that we were to survey people on their opinion of the asteroid XR69P in the Migicue galaxy:

How do you feel about asteroid XR69P?

a. I like it.

b. It’s wonderful.

c. It’s too big.

d. It’s too small.

e. It’s too gaseous.

f. It’s too solid.

g. It sucks.

h. other.

Obviously, nearly everyone would choose reponse h. In the case of an obscure asteroid, as with other other utterly unfamiliar material, survey respondents are aware of their ignorance, their indifference and their absolute lack of basis upon which to form an opinion.

On the other hand, there are surveys on topics with which the respondents have some familiarity: 

How do you feel about David Letterman?

a. I like him.

b. He’s wonderful.

c. He’s too irreverent.

d. He’s too commercial.

e. He’s too old.

f. He’s too liberal.

g. He sucks.

h. other.

In this case, 98% of Americans know who David Letterman is. As a result, over 90% of those surveyed will express an opinion including the 65% of them who haven’t watched his show in twenty years and have not had a thought, much less a conversation about David Letterman. These respondents are mostly ignorant, mostly indifferent but forming a response because they are being asked for a response. 

Indifference to a question is not measured by the response that question illicits when posed. To put it another way:

Which is more reflective of public opinion on David Letterman?

a. the fact that  a great majority of the respondents live their lives without ever having a thought, much less an opinion, about David Letterman

or

b. the fact that a great majority of the respondents expressed an opinion about him when asked

Let's say that 80% of the respondents gave positive answers. And let's say that 50% of those never give David Letterman a thought and are only answering because they are being asked. (They are indifferent but, when asked, have more positive than negative feelings about Letterman.)

The pollster would be likely to conclude that the public feels very positively about Letterman. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that this conclusion is false. For it counts indifference as a positive reaction.


Now, it makes little difference whether polls of opinion accurately assess attitudes toward a TV personality, but it makes a big difference when the opinions expressed concern public policy and political candidates. For when large swaths of uninformed, uneducated, a-political citizens vote (elections being a form of opinion survey), as has occurred in the most recent case with The Tea Party, the course of a country swings in their direction. It is as if we checked "It's too gaseous." and science, taking our opinions into account, therefore decided to turn its attention to studying (non-existent) asteroid gas.

American Self-Deception

The ubiquity of American self-deception is such that the prospect of deconstructing our national character with an eye to straightening out the culture is inconceivably daunting. Where would you start?

With "the home of the free and the brave"? Free? Please. Is a woman who can't walk the streets of her prosperous town at night free? If the white male were similarly limited in his movement, freedom of walking would become a plank in the Republican party platform! Are children forced to live among armed camps of drug dealers free? American Freedom: the economic wherewithal to live behind the walls of a gated community. And the brave? If you've been to the graves of the American dead in Normandy, France and read the tombstones of the brave, you will have noticed that there is a preponderance of seventeen year olds from the most economically depressed areas of the American South. These were not the brave. These were the desperate, the uneducated, the manipulated. The throwaways. Some things never change.

Or should we start at the end instead? Let's look at our current efforts to solve the global warming crisis. Self-deception. Talk. "Not if it negatively impacts my (extravagant, wasteful, addicted and unhappy) lifestyle." We don't have lives, here in the U.S. We have lifestyles. Same thing, only bathing in the self-deception of an unhappy people pursuing happiness through materialist self-distraction. Harder and harder to talk to your children -- have you noticed yet -- because children see your truth, the truth you're madly paddling to escape.

Slave owners declaring that all men are created equal, manifest destiny as a rationale for genocide, elected officials spending nearly all their time raising money from wealthy interests who thereby purchase access and influence, corporations spewing public relations and advertising which is nothing more and nothing less than an officially sanctioned form of lying, war against those who possess natural resources, a judicial system that puts poor, barely defended blacks to death despite overwhelming evidence that mistakes are made all the time.

Why do attorneys accept a justice system devoid of justice? Why do businesses agree to lie to their customers for profit? Why do politicians allow lobbyists to monopolize their time? Why are the media used for sales rather than enlightenment?

The answer is that the United States is a society founded, developed and maintaining on self-deception. Hard to see for those who have grown up in it. Easy from abroad.

Seen from abroad, the U.S. is the nuclear superpower attempting to prevent others from having nuclear weapons. We're the profligate producers of carbon emissions telling the world to produce less carbon. We're the lovers of freedom who support dictators. We're the enemies of AIDS who deny support to condom distribution in third world countries resulting in hundreds of thousands of women contracting AIDS from their sexual partners.

Sports? Our heroes are uneducated millionaire drug abusers while the average person can't afford to take his family to a game.

Art? Removed from the schools, but we cherish our children (and believe in the power of art).

Cinema? We are proud of our Hollywood which is synonymous with mindless entertainment.

T.V, movies, food... American products are known as the lowest common denominator crap in the marketplace.

Education? How long will the U.S. be the leader in innovation when the average citizen can no longer afford to go to college?

Immigration? We treat our desperate Mexican immigrant workers so arrogantly while we enjoy the fruits of their labor...