Iraq dominated the headlines throughout the fall of 2002 and into the winter of 2003. Public opinion on the wisdom of war, however, stabilized relatively early and slightly in favor of war. Gallup found that from August 2002 through early March 2003 the share of Americans favoring war hovered in a relatively narrow range between a low of 52 percent and a high of 59 percent. By contrast, the share of the public opposed to war fluctuated between 35 percent and 43 percent.

Looks like Americans are even more happy with murdering people if its done by a puppet.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/rally-round-the-flag-opinion-in-the-united-states-before-and-after-the-iraq-war/

  • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    Americans don’t believe in anything, half of them can barely read, if you asked them whether Israel was justified in butchering 800 children the poll would most likely flip with 70% saying no, if you asked whether Israel has a “right to self-defense” without any qualification, probably 90% would say yes

    If you asked them if Israel has the right to genocide the Palestinians, 50% would say “not sure” and 50% would say no, but 40% would vote yes if it was a closed ballot referendum item

    Americans are incoherent lotus eaters who think the height of political intellectualism is enlightened centrism with “remote drone bombing” characteristics

      • machiabelly [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        I don’t think there is any “western” country where the people have any control over foreign policy. Japan elected a leader in 2012 that was going to prevent a US military base. Resigned a week before he was going to do it. Similar story in Australia. France elected a leader ~40 years ago I think who was going to dismantle french control in africa. Got elected and realized he had no power to do so, or at least said as much. The recent wars in the middle east were less popular in Europe, afaik, and yet they all stayed involved for exactly as long as the USA.

        I think foreign policy, domestic policy, and economic system together are the state. Everything else is just window-dressing. Thats why we have no democratic control over it. The authority of the state is non-negotiable.

    • SoyViking [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      If you asked them whether “Israel” has a right to bomb the Palatinate to defend themselves against hummus they would answer yes.

  • MineDayOff [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    While arguing with a co-worker about how what Israel is doing to oppress the Palestinians and how they have been pushed to this point, he asked me if I thought the Holocaust actually happened. It is beyond their comprehension that anyone would have any other opinion and it’s easier to just assume I’m some weird conspiracy theorist.

    • ComradeFlygon@lemmygrad.ml
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      9 months ago

      I got the same thing. I was talking about how Israel has historically treated Palestinians and was asked if I was a Holocaust denier.

      They couldn’t comprehend how I thought Israel was capable of doing those things when the Jewish people were victims themselves not too long ago.

      I don’t get the logic.

      • nohaybanda [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        Logic is pretty simple projection really.

        You’re describing to them the genocide of the Palestinian people. On some level at least they must understand that they’re the genocide deniers here. But that can’t be so, they’re the main character! So clearly you’re the one denying genocide. QED

        smuglord

    • i agree with this take. i know a lot of otherwise successful and clever people who see corporate media coverage of live ongoing events and tacitly accept the initial framing. not everyone looks at the messaging of our institutions in a default state of hypervigilance. i understand it. people want to trust institutions. it is exhausting to internalize how absolutely decayed and full of shit the US’ are. if you type a few words into the big corporate search engine the top hits are all to the giant media outlets, and they are lock step on program. or, worse, just turn on the noisy live broadcast box, the people in nice clothes / speaking in even tones are saying the things and showing the pictures that support the easily digestible narrative that is repeated at the top, middle and bottom of every hour.

      web 2.0 has degraded and complicated this formerly clear and simple landscape, but most people still find the big outlets for ongoing stories. because there is no clear answer to the question, “where do you get your news, who do you trust?” when relatives ask me what i read to cultivate my critical perspective. people who don’t have time to figure out what is going on see the videos, hear the calm analysis, and internalize its logic.

      also, jesus… the way the question and responses were framed was trying to create the biggest possible number for “support”. this whole thing is juked six ways from sunday. which comes across as desperate.

    • aaro [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      The CNN poll surveyed 1,003 adults via text message, and only surveyed adults with mobile phones. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.

      • lemmyseizethemeans@lemmygrad.ml
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        9 months ago

        Ok cool. 1000 people who will answer a text message from unknown. Would you? Again, I know literally zero people who support Israel in this conflict. Got friends up and down the age spectrum, in and outside of the states.

        So my poll says 100% of everyone I know wants this shit to end. Facebook, Twitter, insta, all on the same page here.

        Somehow American polls always seem to be, ahem, skewed.

        Look at those 538 predictions based on ‘polling data’ on the last several elections.

        • zed_proclaimer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          So my poll says 100% of everyone I know wants this shit to end. Facebook, Twitter, insta, all on the same page here.

          This is not how statistics works

              • Nagarjuna [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                9 months ago

                A random sample of mobile phone users isn’t a random sample, because you’re only going to get the people who answer texts from strangers.

                It’s called “non-response bias” and it’s a huge part of the reason political polling doesn’t work. It’s strong enough to render almost any sample from a phone survey non-representative.

                • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]@hexbear.net
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                  9 months ago

                  Yeah I understand that there’s a difference between the sampled population and the actual population of interest, but you can’t discount the results of on account of that unless you can meaningfully show a non-zero covariance between the response variable and likelihood of non-response.

                  By all means it’s a caveat but it doesn’t make these results entirely non-informative.

                  In any case I cited iid conditions to explain why asking all their friends is certain to produce a useless estimate of the population proportion.

          • mar_k [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            9 months ago

            18-34? Gen z adults are 18-25 so that’s more millennial than zoomer. Also, smaller subgroups have a bigger margin of error, especially since they only polled 1000 people total (through texts people have to respond to from an unknown number nonetheless)

            Not gonna happen, but I’d wanna see a poll on 18-22 yo college students, I’d like to think we’re much less pro-Israel seeing we’re a lot less likely to get news from mainstream mass media. Completely anecdotal: but I don’t know a single person my age that supports Israel, everyone either supports Palestine or are neutral/ignorant. I’ve seen a ton of my mutuals on social media show support for Palestine too, none for Israel, and I’ve seen a ton of comments echoing the whole “no one our age supports Israel” sentiment too

        • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          So the 70% is combining “fully justified” and “partially justified,” with the only other options being “not at all justified” or “not sure.” There’s no option for like “mostly unjustified” so lots of people who both sides the issue - or even favor Palestine! - are likely to say “partially justified,” which is a very broad and vague statement.

          Another headline you could write from this poll: “Only 27% of young people consider Israel’s response justified - compared to 81% of seniors,” or “50% of Americans think Israel’s response was justified.”

          Polls are, as always, fake.

          • pillow [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            9 months ago

            tbf anything except “not at all justified” is a monstrous take so the poll still works if you’re happy to confirm more reasons to hate amerikans (stuff)

        • Heifer [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          White college grads at 4% “not at all justified” But under <$50k leads with 12% rat-salute-2

          And then… liberals lead all political categories with 11% obama-spike

  • TheModerateTankie [any]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    I wonder if the news portraying palestinians as a turbo-raping, baby-beheading, anti-semetic zombie horde has anything to do with public opinion?

  • drhead [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    That is a very open ended question so it shouldn’t be that surprising that the results are like this. What part of the response are we talking about? Are we talking about whether it is justified for Israel to respond at all? Are we talking about whether the severity of their response is warranted? Who the fuck knows! Probably a lot more of the people who interpret it as the first would agree with the poll.

    The propaganda is how this will be presented as 70% of Americans being pro-Israel, which this poll does not demonstrate.