Honestly, how do you reach people like these?

As a rule, I hate it when people refer me to videos that are more than a minute or two long, but I started playing this and couldn't quite stop... got all the way through it. “Ugh” is right. Thanks ... I think.

Kent, I don't like to post a video without a story, but there are times that words just won't do. I'm still shaking my head. I don't know whether to be ashamed or cry or scream.

Ignorance on parade.

I am sorry, I only got to the three minute mark. I can't watch anymore of this. They are against the very things and people who are working to make things better. Many of their concerns are valid but they support the very people who have ruined this country and support wars, Wall Street, shipping jobs abroad etc. They are so misguided and brainwashed. They obviously get their information from Fox and Beck, who has so many mental illness symptoms they can't be listed. The video was depressing. How do you reach them? I think they are lost and can't be reached. I can't even make a joke about them.

Spud, I agree that it is incredibly difficult to watch, but I thought people should know.

I'm amazed that there are so many people in their middle years, as opposed to the geriatric set. The interviewer is showing extreme restraint!I'd be strangling them by now - 5 minutes in, I had to stop.

I'm not much of a fan of the man-in-the-street interviews or something like Borat where folks are held up to ridicule, but like Kent, I couldn't stop watching this one.

Favorite bit - the last bastion of hope. Canada? Nope, no!
Honorable mentions - Al Sharpton's Black Panthers, communism and socialism in the White House. A long list of things. Obama is anti-progress and willfully destroying the country that he doesn't believe in anyway. And freedom of speech is being taken away.

And of course a dash of the birthers.

I made it through 7 minutes. I kept waiting for someone to verify/justify/defend their opinions in some concrete manner. Then they started in on the mosque. I would respect these individuals so much more if they were able to defend their positions with facts and evidence.

Ugh is right. I bet when the economy improves these folks will fade into the background again. At least I hope so.

Fascinating. Love the interviewer, got through it, too. It reveals so much...

And people wonder why I don't have my light on and offer candy during Halloween? These people (frighteningly enough) are my neighbors....

You know, on TV shows where a crime has been committed and the police interview witnesses? They (the police) always say that something's not right when the witnesses all tell the story the same way--no variation. That's what was running through my mind as I watched this. Most of the people interviewed said the same things, used the same words--all just talking points from Beck, O'Reilley, Gingrich et al.

So, to answer your question: If there are enough uninformed people in this country and they all vote en bloc--yes. I think they could bring this country to its knees. But we won't be praying in that position--we'll be groveling for a morsel of food, a sip of tepid water, a scrap of cloth to wash our faces with.

Thanks for finding this and sharing it with us, Michael. It's chilling. Rated. D

NewLeftMedia is the youtube channel here obviously, and they do some great videos like this. Their best one I think is their series of interviews with attendees at a Sarah Palin book-signing. Disturbing, and revealing, at the same time. The difficult thing is not just to shut off mentally after the first couple of responses and let the rest float by, since it all seems essentially the same---the underlying consistent blankness is that evident. But is it really just "blankness"? To get something out of it one has to listen to the speaker more than they're probably listening to themselves. A friend of mine had something like this in mind long before NewLeftMedia got onto it---he was going to go around the country after Bush's reelection and ask people who voted for him, "Why?" One probably would have heard many of the same platitudes mouthed here, rather sloppily, and various other strange things thrown in. Of course this isn't all that different from any other subset of the electorate.

The question is, what are the real concerns being expressed? I think what they share---even with Obama's supporters---is the idea of some sort of Threat to the country, to themselves, to stability, to American power, to the future. They fear a sense of diminishment in the world. Part of that is justified, and quite real. American hegemony is based on false political and economic premises. The rest of the world didn't really want to be ruled by us by proxy throughout the cold war, they just didn't like the alternative and they accepted the conditions of mutually assured destruction. But what choice did they have? People even resented being put in that kind of situation---imagine! And when the threat of ultimate destruction didn't suffice, more violent economic and military means were applied. As that wound down, neoliberalism wound up, and up, and up. We're still dealing with its cycles of manic activity/collapse.

That does put us in a precarious situation. And even though these folks don't necessarily know all of that, they guess at some of it in their own way (conspiracy theory is the common theorem), and FEEL the rest of it. That makes them open to suggestion where fear is involved. Unfortunate.

rated.

Oh - MY - GOD! All these people can talk in is incoherent memes - they don't even know what they're saying. This was defeating to watch. Defeating.

they don't matter, so you don't have to reach 'em. in fact, you don't want to.

Is the collective IQ of everyone interviewed 13.02?

For a while, when my best friend growing up told me that we needed to declare a war against stupid, I just thought he was joking.

Seeing this video... I mean, how do you even... how do you even begin to compensate for ignorance on a scale that is unimaginable? Thomas Jefferson said that a well educated public was key, the foundation, a corner stone for a functioning democracy.

We're doomed.

I really enjoy reading the OS comments on this. There's so much support offered here for those of a liberal stripe and I very much appreciate it for the following reasons.I grew up in the rural South and knew some people who had really obnoxious opinions. However, when my Dad was laid up with a back injury during harvest, these same people showed up, got our crops in and wouldn't take a cent of pay. What I see in this video is ignorance and lack of education. I work and live around people who hold similar opinions - I've done so most of my life. We are friends and welcome in each others' homes. I'm not afraid to speak up and share a different point of view, but only after they have gotten to know me as a friendly, helpful neighbor and coworker. Some have changed their minds. Some think I'm ok but have some weird ideas (that's usually a mutual feeling). What I'm trying to say is look at videos like this, realize what we're up against, but for heaven sakes don't give up on people like this! There's hope if you reach out.

It's shocking that you can't pray at the Lincoln Memorial any more. I guess all these people were arrested by Obama's goons?

Ugh indeed.

I want a barf bag with this one Michael.
Ignorance on parade here. Yup.

Big thanks for all the comments. What makes me both sad and terrified about this video is not so much that there are folks out there with limited intellegence, I think that is a given in any society. What bothers me is that there are people so many "leaders" out there willing to twist their minds around in such dishonest ways that these people will vote against their own self interests. In the case of the hukster Beck, his goal seems moniacal and monetary in nature. He doesn't care about America in a healthy way, he cares about self and money. Why else would he push those gold commercials on his show that rip people off?

What Tepartiers (and we) need to understand is that the enemy isn't each other, it is the heartless tycoons on Wall Street that are destroying the middle class.

I'm already in too bad a mood from the heat, Michael (no dew on the grass this morning - that's not supposed to happen in Vermont, unless it's snowed). So I don't dare watch this. I might go out and attack random passers-by with my can of spray glue, just because (I need better weapons).

Oh my. Compelling viewing. I couldn't look away.

How do you reach thee people? Not with a ten-foot pole.

One can take comfort in the fact that only 87,000 attended (despite fantastic claims of 300-500,000).

How on Earth are there people like this who are so ignorant? No wonder terrorists want to blow us all up- they think we are all as foolish as this! Argggg! How did this country become so stupid?

Like it or not, this is the "average people" of "average intelligence" in pretty well every country in the world. The US isn't particularly blessed with idiots. It looks worse in a modern, advanced nation where there is a middlin'-average level of education though.

We so love to think that our system of education in North America is doing a great job. This video gives "educated average citizen" a whole different meaning.

These are the people that those who want unfettered mastery over the nation want to see in the voting booths at election time. These are the ones whose vote counts as equal to that of an intelligent, educated, knowledgeable citizen. And there are waaaaay more of these people than there are people who understand the issues, the politics, and the trickery used to subvert democracy by the ruling elite of both political parties who want to continue to, or gain a position to, rule.

You won't see this problem solved until we initiate an education system that teaches people how to think. NOT, as now, WHAT to think - but HOW to think. I won't hold my breath waiting.

In the meantime I'll use whatever abilities, education, and opportunities I have to try to make myself and my family as safe and secure as I can. If that means joining in the mad scramble after the almighty buck, then so be it.

I didn't choose the system - I was, like us all, born into it. I have to find a way to survive in the world as I find it. I wish it were different. I have worked hard for various causes that I thought might make it different. Sometimes I was minutely successful - sometimes not at all successful. One does what one can.

It would be funny, if it wasn't so sad. But I did find great humor in the fact that these people clearly are devotees to Beck and hang on his every talking point, yet none of them recall his saying that BO was a racist. Hmmm???