The Blog to Be Named Later returns with a sad but true fact. The American people don’t know who they are.
See, to understand who you are, you have to know where you came from. You have to know your own story. When somebody says, “Where ya from?” you can’t answer with a blank stare. When someone asks you to tell them about yourself, you can’t simply mention your love for Crocs and mixed martial arts and think that’s a sufficient response. And when a pollster comes up to you, an American citizen, and asks you to name the country that America declared its independence from, you can’t get the answer wrong.
But that is exactly what has happened. In a new poll conducted by Marist College, more than 1 in 4 Americans failed to correctly identify the country from which the United States declared its independence in 1776. To be fair, that means that 74% of Americans can identify Great Britain as the country in question. It also means that based on the current estimate of the U.S. population, no less than 75 million Americans would get the answer wrong.
The results of the survey, when broken down, are essentially an indictment of this country’s educational system. 20% of those surveyed failed to name any country at all, preferring to go with “Unsure” as their answer. Other responses include China, Japan, and Mexico. Yes, that’s correct, we declared our independence from Mexico. As a resident of New England, we frequently have ceremonies commemorating Paul Revere’s midnight ride to warn citizens, “The Mexicans are coming!” Oh wait…
I am particularly happy to see that there are people who think that the United States was once a colony of Japan. That makes perfect sense. I guess when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, they were bombing their own people? What, exactly, was the reason that we revolted against Japan? Didn’t like sushi?
Of course, I can understand people thinking that America once belonged to China. They basically own us now, so that’s not such a leap.
We love to roll our eyes about these things. Ha ha, look at the dummy on Leno, getting the question wrong. On some level, it makes us feel better about ourselves. But it shouldn’t. We should each feel worse, because while it’s easy to laugh in the present, history is as much about the future as the past. In The Tempest, Shakespeare said “What’s past is prologue.” Of course, Shakespeare lived in England, and knew nothing of our great revolutionary struggle against…er…uh…hang on, it’ll come to me…
