A year ago, during the insanity of the BLM/Antifa riots across US cities that killed dozens, caused billions of dollars of property damage and screwed up a number of Central Business Districts (CBD’s), I came across a statistic that should not have surprised me but did.
The number of unarmed Black men that the public think are killed by the police in the USA in 2019, broken down by political ideology.
Putting that into an even simpler form:
Very Liberal respondents:
- 14.29% said ‘about 10,000’
- 31.43% said ‘about 1,000.’
Liberal respondents:
- 6.67% saying ‘about 10,000’
- 26.67% saying ‘about 1,000.’
According to the database at Mapping Police Violence, the number was actually 27 in 2019.
As you can see from the above chart, it’s the Moderate, Conservative and Very Conservative thinkers who have a much better grip on reality in this case.
Is it any wonder that these “Liberal” and “Very Liberal” people were all in on the BLM violence in 2020. I suppose you can at least say they’re genuine in their rage.
But then I ran across the same gap between reality and human minds on another issue, Covid-19, this one from a Gallup poll and splitting only by US political affiliation (Democrat, Independent, Republican):
Again making it even simpler, the percentages of those groups who think that the unvaccinated have a 50% chance of being hospitalized because of COVID:
- 41% of Democrats believe that
- 26% of Independents believe that
- 22% of Republicans believe that.
The correct answer: Fewer than 1% of unvaccinated people infected with COVID will have to go to the hospital.
The good news, sort of, is that at least all three groups had a near majority thinking that the chances of vaccinated people being hospitalised is less than one percent, which is the correct answer for the USA:
The hospitalization rate for both vaccinated and unvaccinated COVID patients is under 1%:
- The hospitalization rate for vaccinated COVID patients is 0.01%, or 1 out of every 10,914 patients
- The hospitalization rate for unvaccinated COVID patients is 0.89%, or 1 out of 112 patients.
While it’s easy to be snide about the political and ideological mindsets that lead to such conclusions, if we like to think that most people, maybe more than 50%, are intelligent and rational enough to accept factual data – and god help me I want so much to believe that – then the fault for these massive differences from reality must lie with our MSM, Social Media and governments, who have such great influence in telling people what’s going on.
No Minister 
I think social media as well as the MSM have a lot to do with purposely polarising peoples points of view, and therefore are somewhat complicit in the resulting carnage.
They are always setting up a ‘us & them” narrative.
In short I think they are borderline criminals.
I started looking at the Wayback Machine for the NZ Herald home page today, to get a sense of how the panic was being generated in the media, what the headlines looked like. Oh boy, have gone back to January 2020 and you’d think doom was upon us!
Well, actually it was – government doom – but, there’s this unreal, apocalyptic reporting that was going on. At the time, I had to ignore it all – was working on a massive project with a tight deadline.
Had to give up with what I was trying to do, it’s too big. The leadup to lockdowns will keep historians busy in the future, trying to understand it.
Social media is really just a hive of people sharing information, so I wouldn’t blame it as such. It tends to be democratising. Not surprisingly, all NZ media that I’ve seen on You Tube has comments turned off. Yesterday’s NZ Herald accident withstanding.
LOL, we are up to 524 comments and 828 downvotes!
Who said Romance was dead?
Dating in the Covid-19 pandemic: Is this NZ’s ‘hot vax summer’?
And how about starting a flirtatious conversation this way?
Personally I can’t imagine a bigger turn off than talking about chlamydia and asking if your shots are up to date as an opening gambit in a potentially amorous encounter
The word you’re looking for is “kink”.
It’s hard to think. We use our devices, our media, our leaders, our blog opinion writers to think for us.
Rationality, or logic, or logos, requires effort. It’s like we’re tricked into taking the easiest, the most convenient, pop a pill, stick in a needle, and all the bad decisions in our lives will go away.
Many “very liberals” are very emotive. It’s their strength. Emojis and feelings. The Pathos part of rhetoric, the emotive, feelz is easily emulated in our techno device mad world. It’s the dopamine feelz, minus logic.
Our leaders have failed us. Been tricked into serving their donors.
The 3 pillars of rhetoric, of argument, are askew. Logic is belittled, an emotion is triumphant. It has the upper hand and respect of gravitas is diminished. Science is no more than a vote?
I guessed 10. I despise the fear mongering of Covid whisperers. And laugh in the face of 1% danger.