Most Americans

In the last several days, several polls have shown a remarkable turnaround in collective American opinion. Where previous polls have shown strong statistical divergence on important issues—both foreign and domestic—recent data suggests a much stronger alignment with the rest of world opinion on the following matters:

1. The number of Americans believing in the Rapture—that Jesus himself will return to Earth and lift believers to heaven while condemning unbelievers to a thousand years of torment on what remains of the planet after Judgement Day—has taken a precipitous drop from 30% to a mere .02%. Whereas it seems that many Americans now realize that, instead of hitching their wagons to fairy tales about eternal joy without effort, they’re pretty much on their own and should dig deep and fix this mess they’re in, a large number of the remaining supporters was found to be located in Washington in the vicinity of the Capitol Building.
2. Support for a strong military and overwhelming war-making ability has also taken a precipitous plunge, with most Americans now realizing that they’d rather spend the Pentagon’s budget on education and health insurance instead. Support for abolishing the military—or, at the very least, drastically reducing its size—rose from 1% to 48%. Over half (52%) of Americans are now aware that investing only a fraction of the hundreds of billions spent on the military into Africa and Asia would be far more effective in engendering goodwill throughout the world; almost all of those questioned agreed that this would be a much more effective way of reducing terrorism. 89% of those thought it was “something we should do anyway, karmically” and seemed to understand the ethical and moral issues involved.
3. Even an issue that has long been anathema to American ears—public transportation and a drastic reduction of subsidies for the automobile lifestyle—has made a dramatic resurgence in 2007. While just over 50% of Americans claim that they would gladly ditch their cars if there was decent public transportation available, almost 80% of large truck (SUV) owners said they would be happy to switch to more fuel-efficient, much smaller cars if “there were proper incentives for doing so”. This is encouraging news that, if heeded by the government and industry (not much chance of that), would signal the beginning of the end of the American “car lifestyle”.
4. Issues like banning abortion, banning immigration, banning flag-burning and banning weapons control have lost massive amounts of support—dropping from the over 50% support they enjoyed for decades to the low teens or even single digits. Instead, they seem to be focused on more important issues, with 62% having realized that the long-term economy is in dire straits and 87% acknowledging that even the short-term economy isn’t really doing well, despite what their government and their television is telling them every day.
5. It seems the bizarre weather has finally taken its toll as support for addressing climate change and pollution issues is now in the 90th percentile, while support for unfettered free-market corporatism has dropped into a statistically negligible 4% (below the epsilon of the study, in fact). Many Americans—69%—are ready to make significant changes to their consumerist lifestyles and slavish devotion to brands and marketing in order to live a more balanced, harmonic life. While many of those questioned (32%) admitted they were hazy on the exact reasons why they thought the current lifestyle trend was destructive and unsustainable, they were still strongly convinced (speaking from the gut, as it were) that “there’s just something wrong, something decadent, with the way we’re living right now”.
6. Almost no one believes in UFOs, psychics, the Real World or The Secret anymore. Additionally, almost no one cares about Britney Spears (2%) or Anna Nicole Smith (3%). Instead, many (73%) indicated that their anti-intellectualism is on the wane and that they would be cautiously interested in hearing the opinions of people who actually study world affairs (names like Noam Chomsky or Robert Fisk are cited) rather than those of discredited hacks from the American Enterprise Institute.
7. Unfortunately, despite this remarkable turnaround in the level of informedness, many Americans are still unclear on simple, everyday information, like knowing what day it is.