A Times survey of twelve Pennsylvanians reveals confusion more than opinion

It’s shocking how bewildered the American voter is; you would think they are in the midst of a depression or pandemic. In a recent New York Times article, two reporters held a conversation with twelve Americans from Pennsylvania who revealed not so much their opinions as the miasma of vague impressions and misinformation with which they elect their representatives. One fellow said, “I don’t do politics,� and he might have been speaking for the group.

Asked why she thought the country was on the right track, “Carrie� listed among her reasons “Our foreign relations are better.� Maybe they are with Canada and the Solomon Islands, but no improvement is appreciable anywhere else. She hadn’t read the recent comment by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, a very sober man indeed, that the U.S. was like a “child playing with matches.� If Americans understood the present state of relations with his country, they would all be digging holes out in their backyards and covering them with slabs of plywood.

What were their opinions of Donald Trump? Most were negative — The Times didn’t hold their pow-wow in Texas. But “Robertâ€� offered this pearl: “Seeing how he governed and his genuine affection for the country was, frankly, moving, seeing somebody who was unabashedly pro-American.â€� Apparently, Robert admired Trump’s chaotic White House, forgave the petty president for dishing on any American who exercised the right to criticize him, and felt that Biden and previous presidents are anti-American; or maybe their affection for the country didn’t move him because they didn’t hug flags.

Another man, “Dorris,� reflected the opinion of others in saying that Trump’s business experience had been good for the economy: “He made really good business deals that I saw. He had China paying us. Plus, he’s been president before, so he has a little more experience. I think he’s a good businessman and he’ll make good business moves for the country.�

I wish he had articulated what China was paying us for. The export-import ratio between the U.S. and China has been pretty constant over the past decade, roughly 3.5 to 1 in China’s favor. Other participants in the discussion agreed that Trump’s business background translates naturally to economic issues. Yet his tax cuts augmented the federal deficit, and the chummy relations between Russia and China — to which he gave a big post-Obama push — are leading to the dollar’s replacement as the world’s reserve currency.

Reading this discussion, I found it hard to believe that America’s economy is doing well, the Dow now over 40,000; for the portrait of America that emerges from this conversation is that of a confused and frightened citizenry trying to assemble some understanding of the country and world from the snatches of radio chatter they hear on the morning commute and from the pronouncements of orotund news anchors; altogether they amount to Plato’s shadows on the cave wall. Here are the first four of their one-word summaries of the upcoming election: “scared,� “concerned,� “embarassed,� and “anxious.� None of them used the terms “excited� or “interesting.�

Nor, like Plato’s prisoners, do they want to escape the cave and face reality, for this would require reading, for which they have little time, and thinking, which they reserve for their paid time. Many expressed doubts and confusion about issues and candidates, but not one showed any desire to dig deeper. Such is the island mentality of Americans: not just disinterest in world politics, but in society beyond the front door. An American’s outreach to the world beyond the workplace goes by areas of interest: Little League baseball, the church, volunteer work at an animal shelter, the quilting bee. They rarely see themselves as part of a community. They seem to embody Margaret Thatcher’s famous quote: “Who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families.�

So politics and the chore of voting are a bore for the participants in this survey. Having little knowledge of public affairs, they are prey to the vilest political advertising in the world, unable to think critically about the nonsense spewed by and about candidates. Lavrov’s comment about the American foreign-policy elite being children pertains to the citizenry as well.

And by the way, while much is made about the political decline of “the West,â€� I don’t see this in Europe, where I live. With the exception of of the United Kingdom, Europeans are much better informed about current affairs, both at home and abroad — for “abroadâ€� is usually only a short drive away; for example, French agricultural subsidies drive Spanish farmers crazy. But when at election time, Europeans reward and punish in coherent proportions.

Jared Taylor recently wrote on this site about the rise of the right — “Germany for the Germans!â€� — but while the European right’s emphasis is on illegal immigration, the other side of the issue is American domination. Europeans have never been comfortable with it, and their resentment is now growing because it is clear that America is willing to throw them under the bus in a conflict with Russia.

Donald Trump continues to scowl, crowing about making America great again, and Kamala Harris parries with her “joyâ€� campaign — effectively, if the polls are any indication. It’s a cartoon more than a political campaign. Accordingly, the participants in the Times conversation, as if they were children playing a game, were asked for one-word descriptions of the candidates, both presidents and vice-presidents. They were asked about they felt about each one running the country, and about economic policy, energy policy, and abortion — all this in a general, rate-them-one-to-five way. Attempts to explain their one-words or their one-to-fives ended up — to put it kindly — odd.

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The best question went unasked: is it right that their country arms Israel for it to continue genocide against Palestinians? In keeping with the mainstream media’s deep-sixing of the Gaza mess, The Times’ interview never mentioned Gaza, and Israel only once: that philosopher “Dorris� complained, “And now Iran is supporting the war against Israel.� Unlike Philip Giraldi, Dorris considers Israel our friend.

The only really interesting question in the interview was the last one: “How confident are you that the election results will accurately reflect the will of American voters?â€� Never mind that the will of American voters is about as strong as Joe Biden’s mind. The answer — a one-to-five rating, one being low — reflected widespread suspicion about the fidelity of the vote count: seven of the twelve participants answered with a 3 or less, and one participant didn’t even vote. The evident oddities of the 2020 vote seem to have made a deep impression on people. Apart from the 2000-election mess in Florida, I had never heard any serious doubts about previous election results.

What must they make of this in other countries? I would imagine that the Russian intelligentsia views it all with complacency: America will fall of its own weight if left unprovoked. Perhaps this influences Putin’s reluctance to retaliate strongly against Nato. The Chinese must be smug in their “autocracyâ€� — the fashionable term in Biden’s Washington — seeing that their own people have a great solidarity with “societyâ€� than Americans do with theirs.

As for average Americans, what a sorry period this is for them! Harassed by lawyers and insurance companies, as suspicious of doctors as of used-car dealers, shaken by school violence, obligated to accept every imaginable type of sexuality, ever less sure of their footing on the slippery decks of the economy. Ultimately, the participants of The Times survey give the impression of people just trying to survive, and who have no time to understand the world they live in — much less read something about it.