Individual accountability

As time draws closer and closer to the supreme court hearing regarding the health care reform, or Obamacare if you want to call it that, more and more people are coming out of the woodwork to oppose it. After reading a nice editorial regarding the health care plan, I feel as though they side stepped around the true underlying issue. In the editorial, the issue is raised that a lot of people are misinformed about the policy, and that the Obama administration failed at conveying the correct information about the bill. It touches on how the reform was initially a Republican idea and that the administration embraced it hoping that it would be accepted by both parties alike; an assumption that turned out to be quite wrong. If you strip away most of the issues surrounding the bill and it's support or opposition though, you get to the real issue at hand: people are horribly misinformed. Not only are they misinformed, but they have built strong arguments and feelings around misinformation, and now are even less susceptible to changing their minds because now the actual facts go against everything they know to be true. How is it that in this day and age people can be so misinformed about an issue, one which is a piece of legislation that is publicly available for viewing in its raw form? Simply put, people are lazy and ignorant. I'll admit, the phrasing of any piece of legislation can be difficult to understand, redundant, and a boring read. However, like classical English literature, if you read it carefully enough, look up the words you do not understand, and ponder the issue, you'll be able to understand the general concepts, if not more. But how many people actually take the time to read the primary literature? Not very many, even though internet access to the bill is available, and most Americans have access to the internet in one form or another. Primary literature aside however, one can find a myriad of summaries of the bill that lack any sort of opinion or political slant. Yet most individuals do not seem to have read such simple summaries, and instead opt for the bias left-wing or right-wing opinion articles that not only skew the facts, but omit some completely. On top of this, the number of articles and summaries of the bill are at least equal to the number of videos or news clips that do an equally poor job of explaining the bill, simplifying the information even further and attempting to make it fit into a 30 -60 second video clip. Which do you think most individuals would pick to read or view? The article or the video? Most likely, and assuming people are as lazy as they seem nowadays, I think most individuals will watch the video clips from their news source of choice, with their bias of choice. Once they've digested the equivalent of a one paragraph tweet of information, they'll begin building their own views and opinions, sharing them with others, discussing them with like minded individuals, and solidifying their stance on the matter. But their stance is so fundamentally weak that it is laughable. It's not weak because of their own left or right leaning bias, it's weak because most opinions floating around out there or gaining substantial attention are based on only a few hand picked facts mixed with a lot more misinformation. When did people become so lazy and apathetic that they ceased to read most or all of the information on a subject before forming their own opinions? When did ignorance become something almost prized, preferring misinformation and editorials to actual facts as boring as they might be? Sadly, these same individuals comprise the voting majority, and as such, make decisions and place votes based on their bare minimum, partial understanding of subjects. When this country was founded, voting rights were limited to land owners, and voting rights were tarnished by sexist and racist limitations. Now, all races and genders can vote, and the voting age reflects the age that one is able to die for one's country. But why are voting rights extended to individuals that lack critical thinking skills? Why are voting rights extended to those that favor ignorance and the quick/easy route over the longer and more involved, but more factual route? No one should be prevented from voting because of their color, gender or sexual orientation. However, the village idiot's opinion should not be counted with the rest. If an individual would rather read a tweet than the actual text before making a decision; if an individual would rather not look up a word's definition to understand a text more fully; or if an individual would rather jump on a bandwagon than form their own opinions, then that individual should not have to right to vote. This country has thrived due to democracy, but what progress can be made with an uneducated lazy populace? Decision making should be done by rational, logical, critically thinking, educated adults; not by individuals who solely rely on 30 second news clips for all of their information. We need to educate our nation so that it can thrive; but until those individuals are capable of making unbiased logical decisions, they should not be allowed to shape their country's future.


UPDATE:

Here is a perfect example of the type of individual that should not be allowed to vote until they up the number of dendrites that are firing at any given time:
http://now.msn.com/entertainment/0319-funny-mph-video.aspx

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