Based on the article Political Ignorance and Bombing Agrabah by Ilya Somin from The Washington Post.
A recent poll shows that 30% of Republicans and 19% of Democrats support bombing Agrabah-the fictional nation portrayed in Aladdin just because the name sounds like it could potentially be an Islamic nation. Even though these results seem unreasonable, it actually makes more sense than you’d think. This is due to political ignorance. People feel as though it is rational to make such radical opinions on subjects such as these because their opinion is not going to affect anything, which in many cases is a probable argument. In responding to surveys, many don’t want to be admit their ignorance, so they poll on something that they know nothing about, almost in the same way we guess on standardized tests because we don’t want people to think we don’t know what we are talking about. When people make rash decisions such as these, and in some cases even in presidential elections, they rely on crude information shortcuts. A crude information shortcut is saying that you are going to bomb Agrabah because it sounds vaguely Arabic, survey respondents could make up the reasonable story in their minds that the poll creator is asking this question because there could be potential Islamic terrorist there. That story that seems to be proposed through the question supports the results from the quiz: of Trump’s strong conservative voters, 46% of them support the bombing of this fake nation. The author suggests that this is okay, simply because their ignorance is rational.
In my opinion, though this is a good argument, the amount of ignorance in this is scary and, though rational, it is not okay. The amounting levels of ignorance, not only politically but in many other areas of society, is heading in a bad direction and we need to find a way to make this better. People making such opinionated statements on subjects that their isn’t even information for them to study is completely ignorant. I believe that the idea of the entire poll is ignorant. Although the poll is to find the ignorance in America, it really shows the ignorance of the poll maker for even asking this question.
Haley,
This is an interesting stance. I don’t find anything positive about rationalizing ignorance.