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Home » The young have gone way way off course: poll

The young have gone way way off course: poll

The New Neo Posted on by

Very disturbing:

Here’s a link to the entire poll.

The opinions expressed by the younger generation reflect the fact that the young have been increasingly indoctrinated in post-modern Marxist theory of oppression uber alles. The figures are astonishing, and the contrast with the elderly is enormous. In this poll, you can see in stark relief the transformation of American thought. Nice work, Obama! Hope and change! Not that he’s solely to blame by any means. This started long before he became president.

Other results of interest:

According to the poll, the majority of Americans also think that Trump committed crimes for which he should be convicted: 59% (on page 21).

DeSantis is the strongest second choice to Trump for the GOP nomination, 31% to Haley’s 20% (on page 22). And surprisingly, at least to me, Kamala Harris is the strongest substitute for Biden at 28%, with Newsom at 7% (on page 23).

Two-thirds of voters think the GOP should hold up aid to Ukraine and Israel for a secure border (on page 38).

On page 46, 27% of respondents think the October 7 attack was justified by Palestinian grievances. And that’s where we have another awful linear progression of age-related opinions, because 60% of those between 18 and 24 said it was justified by Palestinian grievances. Say what you will about Boomers, above age 65 the figure agreeing with that was only 9%. But what is odd – at least, I think it’s odd – is that the answers on whether Hamas’ attack was genocidal are different, although the trend is the same. In that same age group of young 18s-24s, 66% think the attack was genocidal on Hamas’ part. Does that mean they think genocide against Jews is justified? Apparently.

Or they have no idea what Hamas is, or much of anything else. Probably the case. Indoctrination feeds on ignorance, and is helped along by social media.

We are in big big trouble with these generations. But of course you already knew that.

There’s plenty more in that poll that’s interesting as well. Most respondents hate identity politics on campus, anti-Semitism, and think the three university presidents who testified before Congress should resign. Again, the young are at odds with the rest of the country. For example, 79% of the youngest age group supports “There is an ideology that white people are oppressors and nonwhite people and people of certain groups have been oppressed and as a result should be favored today at universities and for employment. Do you support or oppose this ideology?” although 65% total oppose. 67% of the 18-24 crowd think Jews (not Israelis – Jews) are oppressors although 73% as a whole oppose. Is this because “Jews” are defined as “white”? And yet (on page 57) 65% of that 18-24 age group think Israel has a right to exist. What? Maybe they think it has a right to exist as a Palestinian state?

On page 64 you can see that 81% of respondents think that Hamas should not be allowed to run Gaza, and even among that 18-24 age group, 58% agree that Hamas should not be running Gaza. Among the over 65, however, it’s 95%. And on page 66, the question of whether Israel has a right to defend itself is asked, and 80% of that young group says yes. This is also typical of other groups, although a little lower than the over 55 and over 65 groups.. What gives? On page 67, 62% of those 18-24 seem aware that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, but on page 68 that same youngest group is evenly divided about who is provoking a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

On page 69, 51% of those 18-24 say that Israel should be ended and given to the Palestinians; how that is supposed to be accomplished isn’t touched on. Perhaps that answers my earlier question, though, about the young approving of genocide if the ones being killed are Israelis or Jews. Only 4% of over 65 agree that Israel should be handed over to the wonderful and deserving Palestinians.

Decades of leftist and anti-Israel, as well as anti-Jew, indoctrination in our educational system have borne poisonous fruit. I’m not at all sure you’d have gotten higher figures of Jew-hatred from polls of college students in Nazi Germany.

Comments

The young have gone way way off course: poll — 38 Comments

  1. Setting aside the substance of the polling for a moment, I’d like to emphasize that the “registered voter” aspect of those polled makes for a distinctly unusual cohort in those 18-24 year olds. It may be that these are a more highly indoctrinated (buzz-word: “informed”) group than their average peers in that age group, so may be rather unrepresentative on the whole? Still, none of that can be viewed as particularly good news.

  4. According to the poll, the majority of Americans also think that Trump committed crimes for which he should be convicted: 59% (on page 21).

    Yet Trump enjoys a 49% approval rating according to the same poll. So are we to infer that there’s some wierd cohort who thinks Trump “committed crimes for which he should be convicted” yet still “approve” of him?

  5. Of course the big question is whether these ignorant 18-24 year olds will, in ten or twenty years time, be more like they are now or more like the older groups are now. Today’s 65+ group are boomers who came of age in the sixties, and presumably learned a thing or two since then. I’m less confident that this will happen to the same extent, but there’s always hope.

  8. Propaganda and indoctrination of the young by state education works. Sometimes education by the real world overcomes it, but hatreds seeded when young, are particularly durable?

  10. In that same age group of young 18s-24s, 66% think the attack was genocidal on Hamas’ part. Does that mean they think genocide against Jews is justified? Apparently.

    Maybe they don’t know what genocidal means?

    —————————————————————

    I wonder what the approval ratings would be for Marvin the Martian.

  11. Presumably, today’s 18 to 24 year olds started being indoctrinated in high school, perhaps even middle school. But today, it’s happening in elementary schools and even some kindergartens. If this goes on, imagine the poll results of those future generations.

  12. Have to ask my sixteen year old granddaughter who’s taking AP US history.

    I recall she had a good time at a friend’s bat mitzvah.

  14. Irish Otter, the poll under discussion in this thread is basically out of this world.
    Does that count? Maybe the aliens are the secret indoctrinators in hiding.

  16. The younger respondents clearly have no facility for logical consistency.
    I’m in the “so ignorant it hurts” camp — they don’t know history, geography, or much of anything else.

    Here’s a poll on one particular instantiation of ignorance.
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/from-which-river-to-which-sea-anti-israel-protests-college-student-ignorance-a682463b

    College students don’t know, yet they agree with the slogan.
    By Ron E. Hassner Dec. 5, 2023

    When college students who sympathize with Palestinians chant “From the river to the sea,” do they know what they’re talking about? I hired a survey firm to poll 250 students from a variety of backgrounds across the U.S. Most said they supported the chant, some enthusiastically so (32.8%) and others to a lesser extent (53.2%).

    But only 47% of the students who embrace the slogan were able to name the river and the sea. Some of the alternative answers were the Nile and the Euphrates, the Caribbean, the Dead Sea (which is a lake) and the Atlantic. Less than a quarter of these students knew who Yasser Arafat was (12 of them, or more than 10%, thought he was the first prime minister of Israel). Asked in what decade Israelis and Palestinians had signed the Oslo Accords, more than a quarter of the chant’s supporters claimed that no such peace agreements had ever been signed. There’s no shame in being ignorant, unless one is screaming for the extermination of millions.

    The story is paywalled from there, but most of the media picked it up, right and left.

    Reason covers some of that blank wall.
    https://reason.com/volokh/2023/12/10/is-support-for-from-the-river-to-the-sea-based-upon-ignorance/

    Would learning basic political facts about the conflict moderate students’ opinions? A Latino engineering student from a southern university reported “definitely” supporting “from the river to the sea” because “Palestinians and Israelis should live in two separate countries, side by side.” Shown on a map of the region that a Palestinian state would stretch from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, leaving no room for Israel, he downgraded his enthusiasm for the mantra to “probably not.” Of the 80 students who saw the map, 75% similarly changed their view.

    And then adds:

    Hassner also reports that a majority of those surveyed who initially voiced support for a single Palestinian state moderated their views “when they learned it would entail the subjugation, expulsion or annihilation of seven million Jewish and two million Arab Israelis.”

    Hassner’s survey focused on the implications of “from the river to the sea.” I would not be at all surprised were surveys looking at claims Israelis are European colonizers or comparing civil and religious freedom across the Middle East to find similar levels of ignorance, and an equivalent moderation of views when respondents were presented with relevant history and context.

    While some argue that universities (and others) should tamp down on free expression in order to quell discord on college campuses, Hassner’s findings suggest universities might do better to double-down on their core mission: Educating their students and providing a forum for the presentation and examination of ideas. As Hassner found, something as simple as showing students maps of the Middle East significantly informs and affects their understanding of the current Israel-Hamas conflict. Now imagine what might happen if universities made a serious effort to sponsor substantive forums on the history of the conflict, presenting thoughtful proponents of the competing positions and laying bear the full complexity (and perhaps intractability) of the current situation, all the while modeling civil discourse for assembled students. This would do more than policing memes and chants. Universities, of all institutions, should believe in the power of education.

    All very good advice, but is it feasible at this point in the devolution of academe?Consider the arguments in this post:
    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/12/yoram-vs-robby.php

    They are worthy of a separate discussion, so I will just point out that geographic ignorance is not new, the Left has been working on it for a long time.
    (Confessions of a nerd: I loved geography in school and still read atlases.)

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/geography-survey-illiteracy

    PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 19, 2002

    The National Geographic-Roper 2002 Global Geographic Literacy Survey polled more than 3,000 18- to 24-year-olds in Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden and the United States.

    In a nation called the world’s superpower, only 17 percent of young adults in the United States could find Afghanistan on a map, according to a new worldwide survey released today.

    The young U.S. citizens received poor marks generally in geography. But then, as results showed, their counterparts in other countries were hardly star students.

    Sweden scored highest; Mexico, lowest. The U.S. was next to last.

    “The survey demonstrates the geographic illiteracy of the United States,” said Robert Pastor, professor of International Relations at American University, in Washington, D.C. “The results are particularly appalling in light of September 11, which traumatized America and revealed that our destiny is connected to the rest of the world.”

    About 11 percent of young citizens of the U.S. couldn’t even locate the U.S. on a map. The Pacific Ocean’s location was a mystery to 29 percent; Japan, to 58 percent; France, to 65 percent; and the United Kingdom, to 69 percent.

    Are Young U.S. Citizens Americentric?
    Despite the threat of war in Iraq and the daily reports of suicide bombers in Israel, less than 15 percent of the young U.S. citizens could locate either country.

    More young U.S. citizens in the study knew that the island featured in last season’s TV show “Survivor” is in the South Pacific than could find Israel.

    Particularly humiliating was that all countries were better able to identify the U.S. population than many young U.S. citizens. Within the U.S., almost one-third said that population was between one billion and two billion; the answer is 289 million.

    “It gives the sense that there is this Americentric thing going on—that we are big and powerful and have all these people in our country,” said John Fahey, President and CEO of the National Geographic Society.

    On the other hand, Pastor suggests that the results could mean that most young Americans just have no idea of the total world population (about six billion).

    Poor Geographic Literacy Worldwide
    Young adults worldwide are not markedly more literate about geography than the Americans.

    On average, fewer than 25 percent of young people worldwide could locate Israel on the map. Only about 20 percent could identify hotspots like Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq.

    …
    Geography Not Valued in Schools
    Since the last Geographic-sponsored survey in 1988, said Downs, the percentage of young U.S. citizens who reported taking a geography course in school rose from 30 to 55 percent. And students who had studied geography did better on the current survey.

    U.S. schools generally have slighted geography. “If geography is not in the curriculum,” Downs said, “it’s not tested—and that says to the students that it is not valued.”

    The schools are not solely to blame, either. “Wouldn’t it be nice if parents also read atlases to their children?” Downs says.

  21. If this goes on, imagine the poll results of those future generations.

    Geoffrey Britain:

    Life goes on, but not necessarily in the same direction. I was in the Howdy Dowdy generation. I went New Left. Now I’m conservative.

    Life is not linear.

  22. I was in a discussion elsewhere on young people going for the trades rather than college. One guy was talking about the “tragedy” if some 143 IQ chose to be a plumber rather than going to college. He got pretty soundly thumped for that attitude.

    What would be the crosstabs among people who chose the trades? I honestly don’t know, but such people are not likely to cut off their body parts and beg for hormone shots.

    I pointed out to one that for every 5 tradesmen who retire, two replace them. So the problem becomes: how long do you want to wait for that plumber? Are you going to criticize his life choices? Or are you going to promise him gold bullion if he’ll just bump you up in the queue?

  23. Do the poll results mean education is or isn’t effective in a democracy?

    It seems a democracy cannot use mass education to inculcate in its children a love of country, capitalism, liberty….

    Or does it mean hatred is easier to teach than advanced math?

  24. “One guy was talking about the “tragedy” if some 143 IQ chose to be a plumber rather than going to college.”

    If enough of those 143 IQs go into the trades, be it plumbing, electrical, general construction, or others, we may have some hope. Those are the sort of people who have the mental capacity to examine, and question, existing techniques, materials and processes which leads to improvements in the field.

    Assuming they also have the mental capacity to recognize indoctrination vs education and information and reject the former in favor of the latter. As for the great mass of Dull Normals – IQs in the 95-105 range – we’re f**king doomed.

    In a little less than two decades Western Civilization will undergo a regular, and predictable, transformation as the “older generation” retires and/or dies off and the Army of Angry Palestine Chanters will begin taking over. Will the 103 IQ that has swallowed and embraced every bit of anti-civilizational propaganda be capable of not only running a business but developing new approaches that lead to improvements in function and living standards?

  25. Cavendish,

    Interesting thought. Continuing in your vein: We always have to account for the fact that 50% of the population are on the low side of the IQ bell curve. They can be easily swayed, but I think in the past due to a culture that empathized a higher moral ground, many were effectively immunized. They may have not been the sharpest knives in the drawer, but many were raised with good values which they adhered to throughout their lives.

    My concern is that coupled with the lower 50%, is what has happened to the upper 50%. I know many upper 50’s who have totally bought into the liberal/left philosophy. That, coupled with the moral decline of the lower 50s, leads to disaster.

  26. “I was in a discussion elsewhere on young people going for the trades rather than college. One guy was talking about the “tragedy” if some 143 IQ chose to be a plumber rather than going to college. He got pretty soundly thumped for that attitude.”

    “What would be the crosstabs among people who chose the trades? I honestly don’t know, but such people are not likely to cut off their body parts and beg for hormone shots.”

    Someone with an IQ of 143 is going to be bored silly in most professions, whether it be as a plumber, DEI enforcer, electrician, barista, sociologist, police officer, etc. The better comparison is someone with an IQ of 100 or so, which is the population mean, and according to the Bell Curve, fairly close to the mean of college students. Mean for those with doctorate degrees (excluding Jill Biden’s EdD) was only about 125. An IQ of 143 is in the top 1%. The better question is for those in the 2/3 of the population between 85 and 115.

    I spent my career as a patent attorney dealing mostly with those on the right side of the IQ bell curve. Some I dealt with were really out there – I know one triple doc (MD, JD, PhD) working on another PhD. Another got bored, after 20 years of teaching theoretical physics at a well known research university, and became a programmer. The commonality, if any, is a restless intelligence, that is bored easily. And boredom is the enemy of doing a job methodically and thoroughly, day in and day out. You don’t want someone like that wiring or plumbing your house, but also not doing many of the things that college grads do.

  27. The NPC meme is real.

    This is just people mashing together a bunch of talking points they heard and running with them without having any original thoughts.

    They hear “Palestinian violence is justified” because they “live in an open-air prison” and at the same time they hear “But but but we’re not saying Israel doesn’t have a right to exist!” and they just run with these phrases and don’t care to come up with a coherent position.

    And I don’t think Harvard is doing this to people; it’s mostly a result of getting our news in soundbites and 280-character tweets.

  28. Off course for who? you? or the hegelian globalists constructing tomorrow?
    The funny part is hearing the lawyer who doesn’t want to hire, be surprised that this anti israel and anti semetism is from the left and not the “right” – so i guess he knows nothing of stalins history when he declared everything else to the right of communism…

    This is like one of those greek plays…

    I guess the people who would fight for them were too busy becoming un-mate-able…

    I did say once that the subset of X is Y – and its clear how that is working out

    go back 10 years and note what i was trying to put together for yall… the lack of births, the college imbalance repeating the collapse of the soviets due to hypergamy, the immigration replacements are even being called that by some but with blowback, the lefts magyar struggles points forgotten which would tell some that perhaps they are funding their own rope, and so on.

    well, ya looking at the result of that 17 years on, and i would not be too keen on thinking that its going to stop and not continue… 17 years ago was easier than now, and now, well, there are consequences to not picking the right side.

    dont get on my case for my attitude
    its not as historically piss poor as you may think

    though right now, without studying the czech and other events, most dont know we are one court decision away from this republic being over. (and if that dont work, just look at who is defending or rather, who are too sick to even pretend to defend in peace)

    in the greater scheme of things
    popcorn and lots o butter is in order
    I tried to do my part 30 to 20 years ago…
    I have family members dying, and am old enough to worry if i am next
    pass the popcorn…
    or to quote:
    i may be going to hell in a hand basket, but i can at least enjoy the ride.

  29. oh
    almost forgot

    all this, was forced in place by modern feminism…
    who took over the schools and kicked men out?
    who created single mother families who could not supervise what was poured into minds?
    who flooded the schools and got on tick tock showing they were doing things to the kids for the cause (reddit showing them crippling boys, and helpig girls)

    and on and on..

    no other group had any power to do that – AND insure that like the shakers there were no replacements, there was just obtaining others to replenish.

    but…
    such powerful winners when against their own
    should take a bow…

    nothing was done to halt this – and or even care what it means:
    The nationwide birth rate fell significantly between 2007 and 2022, dropping from 14.3 births per 1,000 people to 11.1, or nearly 23%, per new CDC data

    notice no credit to the people who made relationships intolerable, hypergamic, and astronomical body counts… [those who recently have abandoned the women they used and have decided to back men who say they are women]

    Growing urbanization is another key driver of declining birth rates, characterized by smaller living spaces, increased focus on careers, and limited support networks. Another is the growing access to family planning services and contraceptives, particularly since the 1970s

    yeah… every disney movie with a modern princess hates the prince… and has taught girls that wanting a famiy is really really bad… and yet, the cause of this problem is urbanization..

    The United States isn’t investing as much in human capital as other developed countries and its comparative advantage is falling behind as a result. U.S. students’ math skills have remained stagnant for decades. The country is falling behind many others which have greatly improved, such as Japan, Poland, and Ireland. In 2021, there were 2.0 million status dropouts between the ages of 16 and 24. The overall status dropout rate decreased from 8.3 percent in 2010 to 5.2 percent in 2021.

    yes, education collapsed… and so has the meaning of college degrees..
    and no, its not cause there isnt enough money!!!!!!!!!!!!
    (read those ppl that said something 20 years ago that amounted to pish tosh)

    The military has experienced increasing difficulty in recruiting soldiers as a result of physical inactivity, obesity, and malnutrition among our nation’s youth – CDC

    Nationwide, 77% of youth between the ages of 17 and 24 cannot qualify for the military service.” [it used to be about 35%] or as the pentagon puts it – study from the Pentagon shows that 77% of young Americans would not qualify for military service without a waiver due to being overweight, using drugs or having mental and physical health problems.

    To put it bluntly, I am worried we are now in the early days of a long-term threat to the all-volunteer force. [There is] a small and declining number of Americans who are eligible and interested in military service

    oh… the face on the ladies when they get drafted to finish off the last of the below replacements… will be a site to see… what? you mean when we said we wanted to be like the men, we really thought we wanted to be like the men?

    if your not laughing, your too close to the issue and have no perspective
    sometime back about 1345 years in egypt, a bunch of people had a discussion
    it was about things they too thought was important, like this

    anyone remember the conversation or their names?
    didnt think so.

  31. “One guy was talking about the “tragedy” if some 143 IQ chose to be a plumber rather than going to college.”

    My HOA had a long-term problem with hot water in the boiler room. Over the years, so many pipes had been added that “jerry-rigged” accurately described the pipe configuration in the boiler room. Most plumbers lacked the IQ to accurately diagnose and fix the problem. One finally did. In over a decade of plumber attempts, this plumber was the first one to give a good on-the-spot analysis. He had the 3-dimensional thinking and analytic capabilities of an an engineer.

    I recently had a lot of plumbing work done, the consequence of 50 year-old pipes finally reaching the end of their life span. I used a different plumber from the above, that an electrician friend recommended and who charged a very good price. He didn’t just do the work; he talked his way through what he was doing. I was impressed by all the problem-solving he had to do.

    A skilled tradesman doesn’t waste his mind. Not at all. One advantage of being a skilled tradesman is that you avoid the lefty brainwashing you get in college. Granted, you can’t avoid it in high school.

  32. Gringo,

    I spent my career as an experimentalist which means I had to interact with a number of trades to keep the lab running. 95% were extremely good problem solvers and I would say above average intelligence. Top of the heap were the machinists. They think in 3d and are amazing in terms of helping with designs, let alone their skill with lathes, mills, etc.

  33. You don’t want to try to match brains with the BigThree/UAW skilled trades guys. They can do plane and solid geometry in their sleep.

    I have a relation who’s told the same story three times in the last couple of years about having a tough time with a tree fallen across his lawn. One of his friends shows up, fortuitously. Described in good terms but…”he doesn’t have a college degree” each telling.

    Thomas Sowell said the best thing about his Harvard degree is that he’s not impressed by Harvard degrees. And that was before the current fuss.

    I went through my late adolescence in college plus a temporary deferment. Gave me time in that environment. Of course, it would have had many influences on shaping me, if only opportunities having little to do with education which just happened to be more or less associated with a college environment. Where I’d be without this is….different.
    But my classroom learning…..

  34. The sentiment on the Left is that Jews are white. And since they’re white they are part of the oppressor class. They deserve scorn and derision like the rest of the white America.

    Are they conflating Jewish Americans with Israelis? Of course they are!

    The Left has been very sympathetic with Muslims over the past decades and it’s easy to pick sides when the oppressed are Muslims and the baddies are white.

    It seems to me like the mostly peaceful demonstrations, the violence against Jews (and other non-Muslims), and the desecration of churches (not so much here as in Europe) clearly shows the incompatibility of Islam with the West. They hate us and want us dead.

    I’m with Geert Wilder, they gotta go!

  36. Yawrate:

    By the way, Palestinians and other Arabs are white. But the left gives them honorary “POC” status because they are third-world people who present themselves as victims.

  37. Old joke about plumbers:
    A guy called in the plumber late one night because his water wasn’t flowing through the taps. The plumber examines the pipes for a few minutes, takes out a little hammer, and gives one of them a good thwack. The water starts flowing again.
    He gives the homeowner a bill for $350 (it’s an OLD joke).
    “That’s outrageous!” the man fumes. “All you did was hit a pipe!”
    So the plumber tears up the bill and writes a new one.

    Hitting pipe $50.
    Knowing which pipe to hit $300

  38. Aesop.
    I knew an auto mechanic who joked about that. Many times, he used what was available for retail in a parts store.

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