More Surprises About the American People

Or maybe not. John Oliver visited Moscow. Try to make it through this segment of Last Week
Tonight:

 

 (If you can't, get through the whole thing, jump in at 13:40.)

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

 UPDATE:

An Annenberg Public Policy Center poll from last September found that only 36% of Americans can name the three branches of government, and only 38% know the GOP controls the House.

  Glenn Greenwald

But they know that President Obama is a Kenyan!

The Center’s 2011 poll “found just 15 percent of Americans could correctly identify the chief justice of the United States, John Roberts.

[...]

A 2010 Findlaw.com poll found that almost 2/3 of Americans – 65% – were incapable of naming even a single member of the U.S. Supreme Court. A 2010 Pew poll discovered that 41% of Americans are unable to name the current Vice President of the U.S.

[...]

It’s difficult to maintain mythologies about the glories of American democracy if most of the population believes it has so little value that it merits literally none of their time and mental attention.

Yes, so maybe the next time someone starts pounding his (or her) chest about American exceptionalism and freedom, we should just ask him (or her) to name the three branches of government.

Propagandizing 70% of the population is not easy to do, and obviously requires active deceit or pervasive acquiescence by the country’s news media.

Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe it’s not that hard.