Recent Polls Demonstrate Why We Are So Fucked:
A recent poll of 863 registered voters, conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson (which also happens to be one of the Rude Pundit's nicknames for his penis) University's Public Mind showed that 44% of Republicans believe "that an armed revolution in order to protect liberties might be necessary in the next few years." The overall number, 29% of respondents with 18% of Democrats and 27% of independent voters believing the same, is alarming enough. But that nearly half of Republicans think that they might have to take up their AR-15s of freedom in order to go to war with their government? Man, a bunch of people are living in the kind of fantasy land where their giant beer bellies are seen as sexy and that the greatest threat in the world comes from a black Kenyan in the White House. Partly, the Rude Pundit thinks, "Oh, c'mon, motherfuckers. Wheeze yourselves out of your scooters and just try it. You'll be drone missiled into a red paste in no time." But mostly, he just feels sad.
44% of Republicans think we're gonna need armed revolution. Christ. That's more Republicans than those who believe in evolution (36%). That's more Republicans than those who believe climate change is really happening (27%). This nation is long past the point where we have got to start saying that some people hold beliefs that are so ludicrous, so appalling, so ignorant that they shouldn't even be considered part of the conversation. Or they're Louie Gohmert. When a third of Republicans believe that "Some people are hiding the truth about the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in order to advance a political agenda," then it's time to treat them like the pariahs that they are. The inmates shouldn't run the asylum. The stupid kids shouldn't get to teach the rest of the school.
Republican Senator Pat Toomey admitted that the chances of getting his gun background check law passed was nearly zero because, simply, his own party colleagues just didn't want to vote for something that President Obama wanted: "In the end it didn’t pass because we’re so politicized. There were some on my side who did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted to get done, just because the president wanted to do it." Just a reminder: 80-90% of people, including a large majority in the GOP, supported expanded background checks. However, 64% of Republicans believe that President Obama is "hiding important information about his background and early life," so, yeah, how can he be trusted despite being elected twice? Seriously, it's like the GOP is a bunch of whoremongers driven mad by syphilis, refusing any medical treatment because penicillin is from the Devil and they'd rather scrawl filthy manifestos against Obamacare in their shit and howl at the moon and call it "genius."
Speaking of the Affordable Care Act, another poll came out that'll make you wanna bang your head against the wall until you're so brain-damaged that it doesn't matter anymore. The Kaiser Family Foundation discovered that 42% of Americans don't know what the status of the ACA is, with some thinking it's been repealed or overturned by the Supreme Court. 59% of people who make under $30 grand a year, or, you know, the very people the ACA would help, don't know that it's still the law of the land. And while that number is not broken down by party, another one is: 68% of Republicans don't want to expand Medicaid.
We are so very fucked because Americans are so fucking dumb, especially the Americans belonging to one particular political party. When a large number of a nation's citizens are more willing to entertain armed insurrection than providing health care for the poor, well, it's pretty goddamn hard to make the case that we're the Greatest Country in the History of Everything.
