Our “political knowledge” poll: Can you identify these Marxists?

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

An article at the website Politico piques me. In “Americans bomb Pew test of basic political Knowledge,” Nick Gass reports that according to a recent Pew poll “only one-in-three Americans knows how many women serve on the Supreme Court, but 91 percent can identify Martin Luther King Jr., 47 years after his assassination.”  According to Gass, the same poll indicates:

Almost all millennials surveyed — 96 percent — could pick out [Martin Luther] King [Jr,] from a list of names that included Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson and Thurgood Marshall. Older generations could mostly identify the slain civil-rights leader, as 89 percent of Gen Xers, Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation did.

But millennials apparently aren’t so great at identifying the current party makeup of the Senate. Only 47 percent of respondents aged 18 to 34 were able to do so, compared to 52 percent overall. Those who described themselves as more politically engaged were more likely to know the upper chamber’s composition. (For the record, Republicans hold 54 seats; Democrats 44 seats; and Independents two seats.)

More people were able to identify the country that Kim Jong-un rules (82 percent) than were able to identify Malala Yousafzai as the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize winner (63 percent). And only 51 percent could recognize Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren from a series of four photos with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.).

The prose of Gass’ story is garbled and vague, but what strikes me most is its assumption – which we may take to be the pollster’s assumption – of what counts as political knowledge.  From a purely historical perspective, King belongs legitimately in the domain of general political discourse, but is he really the first item in the lexicon of necessary civic lore?  I doubt it.

Again, is it an unmitigated disaster not to know the current precise make-up of the federal Upper House?  I know that that has been a Republican majority since 2014, but I could only have approximated the 54/44 split.  I know well, however, the separate functions of the Senate and the House, which I regard as actual political knowledge, rooted in familiarity with the Constitution.

Who won in the last hand-out of Nobel prizes is not genuine political knowledge: It is on the same order as knowing who won Best Actress in a Leading Role at the last Oscars or which songster or songstress is currently at the top of the pop chart.  I confess not only to not knowing who Malala Yousafzai is, but also resolutely to not caring.  Ditto where it concerns identifying such stellar political lights and intellectual beacons of our time as Warren, Pelosi, Fischer, and Baldwin.  (I didn’t know that Bobby Fischer had gone into politics. In fact, I thought he was dead!)

It would be a sign of sagacity were many people responding to a poll able to name Groucho, Harpo, Zeppo, and Gummo from their group photograph.  Their kind of Marxism might constitute something like actual political – or anyway cultural – knowledge.  And politics without culture is as much a fairy-tale as the free lunch.

— Comments —

Buck writes:

I read the story this morning and had the same reaction as Mr. Bertonneau. I clicked on “test your knowledge” at the end of the article. After clicking through the first five questions, I thought: “who cares?”

A. Kern writes:

I’m somewhat surprised, even appalled, that a normally lucid person would say he doesn’t care to know who Malala Yousafzai is….

That is truly a real shame. She has been such a brave spokeswoman despite her being shot and almost killed for her good works.

Dr. Bertonneau writes:

I’ll take A. Kern’s word for it. But this is the trouble – the Nobel Prize has become a PC badge handed out by PC committee members to PC authors, usually feminists, invariably avatars of Frantz Fanon. I suppose that there might be exceptions to the relentless narcissistic spectacle of the “Peace” and “Literature” Prizes, but that is what they will be: Exceptions.

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