Surprising statistics about the United States - or perhaps not?
But not exactly encouraging for the Biden administration - or the world.
By Jan Oberg, TFF director
These polls are made regularly by the organisations you see above - CAPS, The Harris Poll and HarrisX. The ones I refer to here are brand new - May 17-18.
What I noticed during a quick scroll-down may make you ponder too - like:
• Today, 31% of Americans believe that the US is on the right track, and 60% that it is on the wrong track. While fluctuations and a couple of months as exceptions, this is a consistent pattern during the last 6 years.
• 62% believe the US economy is heading in the wrong direction, and 29% that it is heading in the right direction.
• 62% believe the US economy is weak, and 38% that it is strong. That is, by and large, the opposite of the profile in 2018-2019, and the reversal happened in 2020.
• The majority of Americans disapprove more or less strongly of President Biden’s management of key issues across the board.
• In terms of the favourability of political figures, the American people rank these on top in that order: Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, Ted Cruz… and while Putin is only seen as favourable by 13%, Antony Blinken - the US Secretary of State - reaches only 21% and falling…
• And which institutions are seen as most favourable?
This is quite a surprising result given that some of these institutions practise censorship and track what the Americans - and others - do and say. The high ranking of the US military and NATO can be interpreted to mean that US militarism and global military engagement are well-anchored in the citizenry.
To be regretted.
One wonders whether the CIA was an institution the respondents could vote for too, or, for some enigmatic reason, it was excluded from the poll.
Evidently, the American people have been convinced that China is an overwhelmingly negative player; and the Biden administration might well interpret that to mean that it can gladly continue its Cold War and provocative policies vis-a-vis China - the usual accusation industry plus meddling heavily in Taiwan.
You invest across the board in creating an image, or narrative, based on fake and omission because that’s what you need to continue an already planned policy in favour of confrontation and militarism instead of genuine cooperation.
It bodes ill.
• Inflation, migration, national debt and several other issues are more concerning to the American people than terrorism/national security (11%), foreign policy (4%) and defence (3%).
It’s quite amazing that a people with such priorities - inward-looking too - accept the horrendous waste of resources on the military, foreign bases, armament and warfare in foreign lands.
• When it comes to where people get their news from, I am surprised that 43% say TV, 22% online news sites, Facebook 8%, Google 6%, radio 6% and Twitter 5%. I would have thought that social media and radio would be higher. But, of course, the US is a traditional TV culture.
• And when you look at this, it is no wonder that the Americans have a mainstream, pro-war and pro-interventionist, anti-Russia and anti-China attitudes. All these top-ranked media have…
• Finally, it’s very clear that the American people are behind a tough line against China, the Republicans in particular:
This bodes ill too.
All in all, at least to me, it seems rather difficult to spot any real potential for change in the overall policies of the United States - mostly because of the pervasive belief in one-sided, government-supporting mainstream media and strong belief in ‘security’ organisations such as Pentagon and NATO.
I would have liked to hear what the Americans feel about their political system and still see it as a democracy; whether they would like some kind of conversion of military spending to make the US a better and more well-functioning place, and how they think about continuing the war in Ukraine.
Let’s look elsewhere for the answers to such issues.
They need more https://off-guardian.org/
It proves to me, without any doubts, that American propaganda is working rather well for the puppet masters.