by Ron Kipling Williams
Polls are over-rated, as are the people who are polled. Polls measure people’s lies to and about other people, and are irrelevant to what they will actually do. In the end, Americans make the wrong choices, anyway. To do the right thing, would be too much like work.
What Does a Poll Have To Do With It?
by Ron Kipling Williams
“No poll has ever incited a riot, an overthrow, a takeover, a seizure of government, a throw down or anything resembling outrage actualized.”
A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll unveiled that President Barack Obama’s approval rating among Americans has fallen to a new low.
Apparently 60 percent of Americans now say they disapprove of the job Obama is doing. They cite jobs, the economy etc. as being the reasons why citizens have lost so much confidence in the president now 18 months into his job.
So what?
When exactly has a poll precipitated any collective action by the citizenry? As far as I can remember in my few short years on this planet, no poll has ever incited a riot, an overthrow, a takeover, a seizure of government, a throw down or anything resembling outrage actualized.
So why should we take this recent poll any more seriously?
Let’s face it. Americans embrace this capitalist system with all the vim and vigor that they always have. They embrace the notion that individual wealth will someday fall into their laps.
So, despite all of the ills that the system has created, from corporate malfeasance symptomatic of its imperialism, and governmental duplicity courtesy of its puppets, the blind patriots still say, America – love it or leave it.
Well, since my Native American ancestors were here first, I won’t.
But back to the subject. When the approval rating of George W. Bush fell to a thirty something percent low for his administration, there was no heaping body moving forward to say, impeach the bastard.
Congress wouldn’t touch it, that is, the weak-willed Democrats who worried about any capital they might lose if they went through the process. Besides, they said, by the time it got to the floor with any sort of substantive measure, W. would be out of office anyway. So just wait.
“They embrace the notion that individual wealth will someday fall into their laps.”
Isn’t that what we all do? Vote for the mediocre, most comfortable characters into their respective offices, and then wait for the outcome?
How about organizing independent candidates who really advocate for our issues, and push with all of our might to elect them into office, so that we can have full confidence of their worth ethic on our behalf?
As the old saying goes, that’s too much like right – and work.
The slump in Obama’s approval ratings is not surprising whatsoever, and even less impressive coming from the same citizenry who believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that it is ok to police 150 countries worldwide as long as it results in our continued conspicuous consumption of oil and other products, and that our allies, though tyrants themselves like Israel, Great Britain, and France, are protecting our best interests, with insignificant collateral damage such as horrid working conditions, the sex trade, and the perpetual robbing of natural resources of “developing” nations.
No, when I read the headlines of the recent polls regarding any elected official, I just skim through, laugh or shake my head and keep going.
Because if I took a poll regarding the job that the citizens collectively are doing to hold our government accountable and create a society that benefits all people, not just a few, my approval rating for them would be – zero.
Ron Kipling Williams can be contacted at awareandoutraged@yahoo.com.
John Parker is Coordinator of the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice in Los Angeles and a candidate for a congressional seat in California’s 37th District.
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