New NYT/Siena Polling Is Out And You Will Be SHOCKED...

...if you expected a second civil war anytime soon.

I was listening to Ben Shapiro this morning when his line of monologue moved to recent public polling. I was listening passively, busy with mundane household chores, but when I realized these polls were not about the upcoming midterms, I had to stop my moving box sorting, pause, and rewind to determine who had conducted these polls, because I was intrigued by the findings. Once I found the polls online, I focused in on three unique questions because they were each illuminating in their own ways - and they’re all encouraging, surprisingly enough.

The first asks participants if they thought peoples’ political views tell them whether someone is a good person - a lot, a little, or not at all. You’ll never guess which option dominated! The largest number of people (40%) said political views don’t tell you a damn thing about whether someone is a good person. A smaller number (34%) said it might tell you “a little”, and only 14% said politics tell you “a lot” about whether someone is good. Now, the NYT/Siena poll info doesn’t break it down by education level, race/ethnicity, etc, but I feel comfortable saying that the people who said that politics tell you a lot about whether someone is good are likely white, middle/upper-class, and college-educated (see below graphic from Pew Research for the partisan breakdowns).

I may be biased, but I think that college is the best place to go if you want to learn about oppression, discrimination, systemic injustice, and, in short, all the things you hate about your fellow countrymen (at least that is the case in the liberal arts - hopefully not so much in STEM majors).

The second question asks people whether they’ve recently had disagreements with family or friends about political issues that hurt their relationships. Again, good news: An overwhelming majority (81%) said no. I do think this number would have been very different at the height of the push for vaccines, though - one of the only disagreements Mr. Sour Patch and I have yet had with family had to do with our vaccination status and whether it was smart not to get vaccinated. We were told it wasn’t, in no uncertain terms, and that it was also very selfish to be unvaccinated - an idea I’d love to revisit now that it seems everyone except the recipients knew that the vaccines would not effectively halt the transmission of Covid, even as the pharmaceutical companies made absolutely incredible profits off their vaccine sales. Additionally, I believe most of my readers would fully accept that those on the right side of the aisle have more friends across party lines than those on the left; even the ridiculously-biased so-called "news" organization the Washington Post confirms this is the case (editorialization well-earned, trust me).

I digress, though; I’m just delighted that most people have not recently had dust-ups that hurt their relationships due to something as insubstantial as politics. In a recent video, I made the point that at your great-aunt’s deathbed, you will not be asking why she never came around to your views on social spending, because at the end of the day (or a life), politics are as unimportant to real relationships as the weather. Certainly, no one believes that Aunt Helga won’t go to heaven if she never sees the necessity of a value-added tax. It’s not a religion, we don’t need to treat it as a religion, and it appears that, by and large, people are not. We can all breathe a sigh of relief over that alone.

Finally, the third and most intriguing question asked was as follows:

Which comes closest to your views, even if neither is exactly right:
The government mainly works for the benefit of ordinary people 22%
The government mainly works to benefit powerful elites 68%
Don’t know/refused 10%

This one was truly motivating. Almost 70% of people believe the government works more for the benefit of an elite cabal of powerful people?! Now they’re speaking my language. I, personally, could not agree more, though I’m willing to bet that the response to this question is quite clear along party lines, and changes with election cycles, which makes sense as we know that humans are both tribal and sometimes blindly trusting of their in-group. But it is refreshing to see that so many see the federal government for what it has become: An overbearing, politically-motivated, clearly-biased institution that can be trusted…to give more priority to those who are already well-off, or to those who are well-connected and well-protected by the mainstream media, like Hunter Biden.

Today’s article (and tonight’s video) got (will get) more current events-y than I usually try to make it, but I think more people must know that the people who live down the block from them are not their enemies, and do not view them as such because of their politics. For too long, I think right-wing pundits have pushed the idea of looming civil unrest without offering solutions; that’s entirely my reasoning behind starting my channel (that and trying to get women more involved in what’s going on in current events and culture).

I got plenty of pushback for announcing that the Sour Patches have moved to a blue city. Fine, fair enough. I don’t feel a driving need to prove anything - but I will say that it’s important to recognize that all is not lost, that we will not be fighting our neighbors in the streets, even with the division of Roe on the table, and that the time is coming when we can all agree that the government is the real source of our disagreements and something that must be fixed, together. Frankly, that made my day, and hopefully you were similarly encouraged.