Below is a link to interviews of Americans conducted by the staff of an Australian TV program. Certainly, they edited out those who provided intelligent answers. Nevertheless, they had no trouble finding plenty of idiots in a short period of time. It causes one to wonder about the state of American education and the lack of critical thinking by adults. I find it mind boggling that each person we see being questioned in the video could cast a vote equal to my own in the upcoming presidential election.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6r1I...eature=related

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Curt Renz - "Centaur"
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yikes

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What a ****.

The Australian doing the interviews.

Having had English friends, they were under the impression that most Americans were retarded. However, I'm willing to bet that you could go to Australia or Britain and find dillards like that as well.

And he took a while to interview. Just listen to the American accents. They're different.

It's not American's aren't smart, they just don't care about international politics. Why do they need to know who the President of Australia is?

They'd have to look for the drunkest person in a Sydney pub to find the "president" of Australia, since they have a Prime Minister

Most of these people probably won't actually vote anyway. Many people don't, and the biggest cause tends to be apathy, and apathy is what you see at work in these people.

I've an idea. Go to Brisbane, stick a microphone in people's faces and ask them to name the president of China or the Prime Minister of Japan, two powerhouse countries in their region of the world.

I'd wager the answers would be about the same as asking Americans to name the president of Mexico or PM of Canada.

Yes, the state of education in the US is appalling, but there are ignorant people everywhere.

Luckily I do not have choose, unfortunely since I am on the border with the States whatever happens there has big impact here.

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If it's just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.
Contact Carl Sagan

When I lived in Germany during the late 1970's and early 1980's, I was amazed about how little the Germans knew about the US, even with the tens of thousands of US soldiers living there.

People thought that we were still fighting the Indians and riding on horseback.

Hmmm - China & Japan are in "our region" of the world? By what definition?

Distance from Canberra to Tokyo - 7918 km
Distance from Canberra to Beijing - 8754 km

Distance from Washington to Warsaw - 7172 km. Guess Poland must be just beyond US territorial waters, huh?


True, but most adults - even those from Brisbane - generally know how many sides a triangle has....or where the Berlin Wall was.

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"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

BTW - the group who did this are called "The Chaser" and they take the mickey out of everyone, not just the Yanks.

Recently they made the NSW Police Force look like a bunch of geese by breeching APEC security, after driving a convoy of official looking cars through a series of police roadblocks, simply by virtue of having the Canadian flag on their cars - despite the fact that one of them was dressed as Osama bin Laden!

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"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

If they'd been stopped for that, it would have been a different kind of "Look how stupid these people are" video. In fact, videos just like that have been made. So doing it is stupid, AND failing to do it is also stupid...

You may need the context. The security around APEC was the biggest Sydney has ever seen - police walking around in packs with machine guns, snipers on roof tops, large chunks of the city turned into exclusion zones. The authorities described it as a "Ring of Steel".

The Chaser crew dressed one person up as OBL, jumped into some hire cars, whacked the Canadian flag on the front and were waived through 2 police roadblocks. If they had been stopped at the first, it would have been utterly expected and would not have raised an eyebrow here. In fact around that same time, an accountant was tackled to the ground in front of his child for jay-walking near an exclusion zone fence, so the much vaunted security was very much in the public mind.

Even more amusingly, the security personnel had been advised to be on the lookout for a Chaser stunt!

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"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

AGN, are you saying that Oz does not have very close economic ties with the Asia-Pacific countries? There's more ways than just physical distance to define "part of the world".

By the way, everyone insisting that there are dolts everywhere, not just in the US, just makes me despair more. Instead of just the US govt getting in on the vote of morons, it's all democratic govts!

When's the next spaceship outta here?

(But will I be considered smart enough to be accepted by another planet? And would I want to move to any planet stupid enoug to think that I am smart enough?)

Things that surprise me are the more everyday variety. For example:

A local news broadcast during a recent election. A man on the street interview, not intended to make anyone look bad - just to get the perspective of Joe Public.

"A democrat hasn't won in this county since Abraham Lincoln!"

Now the fact that a person on the street didn't realize that Abraham Lincoln was indeed a republican wasn't what I found so sad. The sad part was that the journalists and editors for the news program, who are supposed to be knowledgable about not only politics, but also how to verify information, actually chose this quote to play on the air over several others. Not only that, but the news anchor did not correct the quote.

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Spock Jenkins of the Vulcan Jenkins'.

Spock, maybe they meant the last time a democrat won there was in the time Lincoln, the repesentive need not be a member Lincolns family.

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If it's just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.
Contact Carl Sagan

This was kind of what I was saying in my thread:

Should dumb people be allowed to vote.

See Stuart's post.

No, not at all - we have close economic ties with both China & Japan. However, Geonuc did not generalise 'Asia-Pacific' countries and nor did he indicate 'part of the world'; he specified China & Japan and stated that they were in 'our region of the world' - a word that has geographical connotations.

Both China & Japan are considerably more geographically distant from Australia than the US is from most of Europe. We also have close economic links with both the UK and the US - maybe I need to consider them in our region of the world as well?


(BTW - I am teasing here, people. Don't take it seriously!)

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"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

'About the very world their country runs.'

Quoted from the into the the piece. Shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how most americans see the world. This was a biased hit piece to make americans look bad.

Seems to me that if you go looking for idiots, you are going to find them. My question is, how many questions were answered correctly and how many weren't?