A significant portion of the electorate believes that the government is hiding aliens, or that the political leadership are all secretly lizard people (whether this is meant literally or as a metaphor for Jews or whether they think Jews are secretly lizard people depends on the person). There are vast and necessary government functions that most of the electorate doesn't understand or doesn't value or completely misunderstands.
Even on hacker news I frequently see people completely misunderstanding how, for instance, scientific research gets funded in the US. And the readership of this site is far more likely than a random sample of Americans to know about scientific research.
Dismantling chunks of the government based on the ignorance of some portion of the electorate is just bad policy.
"Do you believe that shape-shifting reptilian
people control our world by taking on human
form and gaining political power to manipulate
our societies, or not?"
11% said yes or were unsure.
That's from 2013, so I can't even begin to imagine what a poll from today would look like.
11% said yes or were unsure?! One in fucking ten people, in the most generous interpretation, did not know whether the government were secretly shape-shifting aliens. God, how did we get here.
Noooo, that’s not true. Below 100, as it’s weighted for this to be true: half above half below. It could theoretically be possible for the half below to also be below 50, but this would require the other half to all be above 150, and both are absurd, because there are a whole horde of people of completely average intelligence.
Checking IQ test results, we see they follow a Gaussian with a mean of 100 and a stddev of 15.
Even on hacker news I frequently see people completely misunderstanding how, for instance, scientific research gets funded in the US. And the readership of this site is far more likely than a random sample of Americans to know about scientific research.
Dismantling chunks of the government based on the ignorance of some portion of the electorate is just bad policy.