God, that’s a depressing headline.
According to a Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind poll, 63% of Americans who are registered to vote accept at least one political conspiracy theory, though the polls findings show that those with greater knowledge of current events are less likely to buy in to conspiracies…except for Republicans, whose likelihood to believe in conspiracies increases with current events knowledge.
From Fairleigh Dickinson Univeristy:
However, the relationship between current events knowledge and belief in conspiracy theories is conditional on partisanship. Among Democrats, each question answered correctly reduces the likelihood of endorsing at least one of the conspiracy theories by seven points. Among independents, each additional question reduces it by two points. For Republicans, though, each additional question answered correctly tends to increase belief in at least one of the theories by two points.
“There are several possible explanations for this,” said Cassino. “It could be that more conspiracy-minded Republicans seek out more information, or that the information some Republicans seek out just tends to reinforce these myths.”
For the record, the conspiracies introduced to those polled include matters of whether or not President Obama is hiding information about his background (believed by 36% of those surveyed); belief that the government knew about 9/11 before it happened (25%); belief that Bush supporters rigged the 2004 presidential election in Ohio (23%); and belief that the 2012 election was stolen by Obama (19%, including 36% of Republicans and 4% of Democrats).
For the rest of this poll which is practically guaranteed to cause you to feel shame in your fellow Americans, it’s available to be viewed here.
This article appears in Jan 17-23, 2013.
“More than 60 Percent of Voting Americans Believe in Some Sort of Conspiracy Theory, Pole Alleges” (Posted by David Mendez on Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 2:42 PM)
It’s difficult for Red Star to understand what Poland and its people, wherever they are, have to do with this astonishing revelation.
Nevertheless, here’s something about Rush
“Rush’s latest abortion idiocy”
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/17/rushs_late…
and about his fans…
Your comment predated my thoughts on Limbaugh by just under half an hour. That’s what I get for taking a late lunch, apparently.
Either way, thanks for the correction, Red Star.
How could anybody consider the possibility of an agreement by two or more to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act?
That’s just crazy talk! At least, that is what people suppressing the truth tend to say.
Ironically, the government’s conspiracy theory about 9/11 is perhaps the most the most absurd of them all:
http://www.corbettreport.com/911-a-conspir…
You will have to add me to your list of nuts. I actually believe that a group of senators including some of his closest associates are planning to murder Julius Caesar; I believe (1953) that the British and American governments are secretly conspiring to overthrow the Iranian democracy; I believe that a web of sympathetic officials, expatriots, and journalists conspired to exaggerate and fabricate evidence of an active nuclear program to justify a massive ground invasion of a Middle Eastern country! The list goes on! Please take me away before I do harm to others or to the status quo or to prevailing norms of “common sense.”
Well, many Democrats still believe that Bush stole the 2000 election, even though when all of the votes were counted, even the ones the Democrats tried to suppress, the results were very clear.
But then, as the article alluded to, everyone seems susceptible to those, especially if they see a result they don’t like. Part of the reason, I believe, is that people only listen and communicate with those of a like mind.
The illegal purging of voters from a phony felony list in Florida by Katherine Harris was the game-changing event that can be attributed to the 2000 theft in Florida on behalf of George W. Bush. You can distract people from this reality with state-sanctioned B.S., but the crime in totality did occur through the actions of Katherine Harris. Greg Palast does a good job covering this fraud.
Read “Witness to a Crime” to learn about how election fraud took place again in Ohio to re-elect George W. Bush in 2004.
@rip harvest
You prove my point.
I’m not a Democrat and existing evidence has nothing to do with a “result they don’t like”. It’s like conflating fact with opinion.
Your knee-jerk, judgmental statements re: the results of this study only make sense if all “conspiracy theories” were false and people were fools to believe in any conspiracy ever. You may not like the conspiracies being presented (granted, the Republican conspiracy theories are a stretch, but the Bush theft of the 2004 election was proven by a congressional investigation, fer chrissakes, and the government was quite obviously selling the people of sack full of lies on 9/11, so fill in whatever conspiracy suits you there–it;s likely to be truer than what the government claims), but it’s just this sort of knee-jerk dismissal that helps to hide the dark side of politics in this country by quashing solid investigative work that could discern the truth behind the lies. Convenient, now that the modern media leviathan has abdicated the role of truth-tellers and assumed the role of mindless observers who are more interested in entertaining than informing.