“A vast majority of Americans...”
“The majority of Americans...”
“An overwhelming majority of Americans...”
I’ve been hearing this a lot... mostly from progressive circles, but I’ve heard others make the claim as well. Remember Richard Nixon’s mythical “silent majority”? It’s still being propped up today.
It’s the proclamation that whatever some group wants is supported by the majority of citizens, and therefore, needs to be implemented.
Hell, a certain narcissistic con-artist spent four years talking about his 2016 presidential win with ever-increasing and ever-exaggerated numbers. It went from a close win in the Electoral College to a historic landslide (it wasn’t) and an overwhelming victory in the popular vote (he lost the popular vote). But, in true narcissistic manner, this con-artist continued to spread the delusion that he somehow won by an overwhelming majority of American voters. Even today, he continues to spread the Big Lie that he supposedly won the 2020 election that he soundly lost.
The myth of the majority gives legitimacy to whatever cause or crusade you wish. All you have to do is get “the majority” to go along with it, or to have them say that they want it, and that supposedly validates your cause or proposal or your candidate.
In elections, determining the majority is relatively easy. Usually. Certain presidential wannabes and incumbents can make it complicated. But for everything else, what determines “the majority” is down to optics. A room from one angle can show tens of thousands of people, but, from another angle, it’s only a few hundred.
And, of course, there are the polls. The media loves to use polls for everything. They get you riled up about a subject and then they ask for a poll about the subject. Then they proclaim that whatever that poll reveals is “the will of the majority”.
This commentator has repeatedly said that polls are the worst indicator of what any kind of “majority” thinks or feels. They are easily manipulated to give the results you want. People have literally been asked the same question twice and gave opposite answers depending on how the question was phrased. Polls have been proved to be wrong over and over again, but the media and special interest groups still rely on them and still prop them up as being what “the majority” wants or needs.
So if a certain cause or subject is what “the overwhelming majority of Americans” say they want or need... why don’t they vote for people who will make it happen?
Progressive media continually say that “the vast majority of Americans want” when it comes to better health care, better schools, fixed roads, better jobs, better education, and the like. But if these are what “the vast majority of Americans” want, why don’t they vote for people who will do that? Why do the people who end up getting elected to office are the ones who firmly oppose such things?
Because a lot of those people who promise to deliver such things are branded as “liberals” in communities where being seen as a liberal is nothing short of treason. Sure, you may need better healthcare and things to be fixed, but, dammit, the one promising it has been branded in the local media for the past few months as being a socialist, communist, traitor, anarchist, atheist, Satanist, and a sock puppet to Nancy Pelosi, George Soros, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Hollywood, and the coastal elites all at once. And it’s more important for that part of the country to “own the libs” than to get anything fixed or anything needed implemented. Screw the roads and bridges and let the water pipes spew sewage and toxic waste; it’s better than to let a “lib” get elected into any kind of political office, even for local dog catcher.
The other thing that happens is that a lot of these folks who claim to be part of that “vast majority” don’t even bother to show up at the polls, or they only show up every four years for the presidential elections. But the positions that make the changes that you want, state and local elections, those happen every year. Changes to state and local constitutions and ballot referendums happen every year. And that “vast majority” don’t even bother to show up for those elections.
Is it any wonder, then, why conservatives end up dominating those positions? Their people know the truth, and the truth is that their friends and supporters vote while the “vast majority” can’t even bother to care never mind show up to vote. Either they get turned off by the negative campaigning or they think nobody will ever get those things done because everyone is on the take.
Let’s get brutally honest here... the idea that there is a “vast majority of Americans” supporting anything is just a myth. It’s a delusion. Some parts of America are full of people who think one way, and there are other parts that are full of people that think the opposite. And that hyperpartisan polarization takes priority over anything that people say they “want” or “need”.
I’ll make this as simple as possible... if you want better healthcare, if you want our failing infrastructure fixed and updated, if you want the tax code fixed the right way so millionaires and billionaires pay their taxes just like the rest of us, if you want these things that people claim “the vast majority of Americans” either want or need, then you need to actively vote for the candidates that will make those things happen. Screw the labels, screw the negative campaigners, screw the media, screw the parties. None of them will make the changes you think we “want” or “need” happen.
There is only one poll that counts in America, and that poll is the ballot box. And unless that supposed “vast majority” show up and actually vote accordingly, then what they “want” or “need” means absolutely nothing.
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