Guys, there’s idiots. I don’t know if anyone saw this study, but I think it…explains everything? We all know that Americans are uneducated, literacy rates are swimming around the Hop on Pop level on average, and there is misinformation everywhere. However, as I have become addicted to watching teenage white boys debate Trump supporters (I’m unwell), it’s become glaring how wrong Americans are about populations. I just heard a jovial man who may have been drunk or may have just had a drunk personality exclaim about how Joe Biden let in so many illegals that the country is overrun by them to the extent that our economy will soon be crushed by the weight of them. There seems to be a misconception that right outside these peoples doors, just around the corner, or maybe in the next town over, the street is thick with fruit vendors who are also somehow gang members. It’s my fault, as a leftist, that this imaginary scenario sounds cool as fuck. I get that I am not going to be bringing any suburban moms into the tent with that attitude. And, in general, I do think it’s deeply important for us on the left to attempt to see the humanity of those we oppose and try to meet them where they are, unless they are nazis. That’s why there’s so many New York Times and NPR stories about low-income majority white towns where there are suddenly more brown people. We’re meant to read those and understand that if you have never had the means to live or even travel outside of your town, not to mention the USA, you become easily convinced that people with darker skin and accents are different than you in more ways than just the fact that they came from another country. You’re supposed to understand that sometimes immigrants come into a town and it does actually cause economic problems, and that means real effects are felt by real people. As you sip your mocktails and grab your macbook from your new yorker tote bag, you can’t even imagine how hard it is when brown person. Ok, fine. But can we maybe balance out the racist human interest stories with some hard numbers? Because yeah, ok, maybe there was more immigration under Biden, and we can talk about why, but maybe we should first get on the same page, as a nation, about HOW MUCH MORE immigration there was. Because people do not understand numbers, we will have to make many analogies and extrapolations, and that’s where comedians like me come in.
People think that 27 percent of people in the United States are (snort) Native American. It’s weird to start with this one because I feel like once you read that it’s sort of game over for people’s perception of reality. When I think about the absurdity of this claim, I feel a sense of doom, but of course “sense of doom” is pretty much baseline for most thinking people for the last *checks watch* …yeah, we’ll go with decade. If almost one third of the United States population was Native American, that would mean everyone who is not Native would know someone, or multiple, or a great many people who are. 30 percent of American’s can’t drive. 30 percent of Americans have high blood pressure. 30 percent of Americans is fucking ONE THIRD of Americans! ONE THIRD??? The actual number is %1, down a dispiriting 99% from before this dumbass country started
its
grand experiment which, for the record *insert Curb Your Enthusiasm music* is not going well!
Muslim Americans apparently also make up 27 percent of Americans with a whopping 41 percent being Black. So, throw in some First Peoples and yeah, that’s pretty much everyone! I guess a few people must be both Muslim and Indigenous and also Black, but wait, just taking a look here and yeah, another forty percent are hispanic. Hold on…ok I see what happened. It must be that a bunch of the hispanic folks became muslim and are keeping real quiet about it and also some of the black people did too. Like in the case of Malcom Ten, as Judy Cooper would say. As far as the Muslim Americans who are of east asian descent, let’s circle back. I’m sure there is an explanation besides most people being actually very white and very fucking stupid.
The mean estimates of 1,000 respondents are used in the first set of results, so it’s probable that there are some crazy weirdos who responded “Everyone is Muslim” or something and fucked up the results a little. Median estimates are provided later in the article and it’s not quite as alarming, but it’s still ridiculous. The “discourse” on transgender people, which is 100% exhausting, is what led me to this report in the first place. Median estimates say that about 12 percent of Americans identify as trans. The mean estimate is 21 percent. Guys, not even 21 percent of my baseball team is trans and we have a goddamn rainbow in the logo. I don’t know how to say this, but America? You’re just not that interesting and cool. I am sorry to break it to you, but most Americans are Christian, white, and not openly gay. America is not a giant glittering San Francisco Tenderloin screaming Allahu Akbar except for your one office park where a cowering minority wear pastel polo shirts and go to the last remaining Barney’s Beanery on Fridays.
Adding up any of the numbers from this survey, the natural question emerges as to whether everyone who participated put down a percentage for every group. Well thank Jesus Christ, lord and saviour to 67, not 58 percent of Americans, the fine print says the following:
Methodology: This article includes findings from two U.S. News surveys conducted by YouGov on two nationally representative samples of 1,000 U.S. adult citizens interviewed online from January 14-20, 2022. The first survey included questions on groups involving race, education, income, family, gender, and sexuality, while the second survey included questions on religion, politics, and other miscellaneous groups.
Also, I could not find the original poll data linked anywhere which makes me nervous about accuracy and methodology, because I am an elitist snob about data. I like when I go to a polling site and there are bunch of links that are just strings of numbers making me feel stupid. Academia kink. But this all makes sense, and I think we should talk about it more. There are obviously an insurmountable amount of social problems in our country and we should definitely give up and watch Love Island/ become enmeshed with our Nintendo Switch 2’s until we die, the sooner the better. Obviously. But just for shits and giggles, before we embrace the true death as Sauron commands it, can we have a national conversation about how many of us there are, how big this country is and who actually lives in it? Can we come to grips with how wrong we are about who we are?
