HYPERVENTILATING OVER WORTHLESS POLLS

They’re up, they’re down, and they’re all over the place depending upon who is doing the polling. And sadly they are completely meaningless. They reflect a fickle, highly divided and generally ignorant public that has the attention span of an American Idol Judge. Meaningless poll questions about strongly or slightly disagreeing or agreeing with some pre-formulated simplistic positions, constitute a worthless barometer useful only to a 24/7 info-entertainment news sector that must fill in the gaps between paid commercials.

We have very important polls scheduled almost every November in this country. Those are the only ones that matter. Monthly, weekly, daily or hourly fluctuations are meaningless and trying to parse them for greater meaning ranks up there with our ancestors’ frequent attempts to read sacrificial animal innards with respect to future events. So many organizations now engage in this pointless research and each carries some built-in biases from those who pay for and conduct their work. The right and left both jump on particular ones and spin them to their hearts’ desires, but they actually prove nothing. I would hope all politicians and citizens put those ephemeral polls in perspective and not let them drive all public policy or debate.

For example I may not agree with all the current healthcare proposals, but the overall thrust is correct and needed. My opinion of President Obama is not floating up and down with the many turns in the healthcare debate, which constitutionally involves over 500 politicians and thousands of lobbyists in Washington. Some of those who oppose most changes speculate that adopting some would result in particular national calamity are simply living in highly debatable speculative worlds. They seem to be perpetually fearful of change so they ignorantly and reflexively oppose it, thereby missing all the possible opportunities for positive change, growth and learning. Some proposals may not work but once a variety of them are tried, we can finally start picking real-world losers, not just listening to the rants of various individuals who have no ability whatsoever to predict the future.

The majority of white men over the age of 50 never supported nor will they support President Obama for a variety of reasons. I wrote in an earlier post that I condescendingly view many of my fellow human beings as sweet simpletons, but most TMV writers and readers are generally well-educated and not “average Joes.” Due to my particular and varied professional experience and personal relationships, I have been fortunate to get to know a much larger segment of society in the U.S. and abroad – and the overall picture is not conducive to lofty or intelligent debate. Our public schools and parents have certainly passed on mass mediocrity and sometimes dangerous stupidity to the majority of our species.

My experience with many of my own kind (heterosexual white men between 40 and 70) is that many were stupidly raised to live very rigid lives and maintain limited mindsets in order to be “Men.” Everything they learned and believed in over the past 2 decades has been challenged and some been proven wrong. That disorientating onslaught is only quickening. They are also becoming a demographic plurality and in 25 years will be just another angry minority. Having listened to and spoken with many in the NASCAR circuit, various sports fans, those who work in a wide variety of trades and professionals, and even some in the top corporate world, I see too many have now given up hiding their ugly prejudices and overall ignorance.

Too many relish pointless fights to build up their flimsy and damaged machismos. To maintain their masculinity some have convinced themselves that they must be “hard-asses” and therefore assume extreme, rigid and heartless political, economic and social positions that reject and ridicule complexity, empathy, compromise, cooperation, kindness, civility, and any modicum of education. I have been regularly embarrassed by my group time and time again.

The “Town Hall” healthcare meetings are not worthwhile forums for any intelligent debate. They are merely platforms for political grandstanding by all sides. Very few people really listen to each other or come with open minds. There are simply too many people and insufficient time to discuss the issues properly. These meetings have degenerated into political media events that are entertaining because there is so much raw vitriol, anger, and stupidity on display. If we wanted a real national debate, people would spend time reading and comparing various proposals, and distancing themselves from rigid ideologues and manipulators of fear that improperly influence our opinions and analysis.

Our fascination with polls simply reflects the superficiality and stupidity of many people to whom some of our elected officials are beholden. President Bush was still a powerful leader even with low poll numbers, and President Obama can be as well. Our leaders choose to be ineffective or to do nothing. We may not agree with all their policy positions but we certainly cannot adequately judge their proposals without trying some.

Despite claims to the contrary, no one can predict the future, but we can use our experiences from the past to intelligently guess how some things may work – and still get that wrong. I have worked in business management for many years and know that financial projections beyond 3 years are simply flights of meaningless fancy, permitted by powerful financial spreadsheet programs. (Sometimes even next year’s projections are merely wishful thinking. Who in 2007 really saw where we would be in 2009?) Too many things change and there are too many unknown variables to adequately predict public or private budgets and finances 10 years in the future.

We must realize that one-third of the current federal fiscal deficit is due to lower tax revenues from the current deep recession and another third is due to prior tax cuts, some of which will expire by law. To pay for all our governmental programs, including healthcare with or without reforms, we must grow up and pay higher taxes across the board and in all income categories. This prediction you can trust to be more true than false, regardless of which political party is in power.

Much of what President Bush proposed was enacted, except for the private savings accounts that would have been carved out of social security taxes. That proposal had some merit if it had been set up completely separate from changing or funding social security, but extremists on the left killed meaningful compromise. His policies, coupled with others from previous administrations, lead us to this global financial and economic crisis, so many have naturally been discredited. It is very humorous to see rigid ideologues still defending some of those economic and fiscal policies because they cannot admit defeat or being wrong as that would damage their egos and self-image.

I see the same being attempted from some on the right with respect to the Healthcare debate. Unless you are a large shareholder or top executive in a healthcare insurance company, a hospital, a large healthcare provider, or pharmaceutical enterprise, you might be playing a stooge by opposing most of the proposed changes without adequately outlining alternatives beyond leaving the status quo in place. I have major problems listening to politicians and advocates of particular positions who take large sums of money from some of the principle players in this industry. Objectively thinking about the public good for most citizens is certainly compromised when big money is thrown around.

For those who hail various ephemeral poll results as vindications of their own prejudices, I suggest you are merely massaging your egos with the half-baked opinions of many misinformed individuals. For those sensitive readers who dislike seeing such words, you are encouraged to forcefully argue to contrary in your comments. Civil discourse at TMV involves the written battle of competing opinions supported by facts and well-reasoned arguments with an openess to conflict, new ideas and changing one’s mind.

8/7/09 by Marc Pascal in Phoenix, AZ