Scary stuff out of the States

20% of Americans think Barack Obama is a Muslim, and that number is apparently climbing. This seems massively significant to me. How can people be growing MORE ignorant? They can't; it's impossible.

What this number means is that many people don't know or fail to know facts, rather they choose to know or not know things based on other considerations, like media trends. I'm reminded of the cantankerous old guy who'll claim there was no moon landing or the evangelicals who claim people choose to be gay just to spite God or the hippie who believes crystals can heal.

All of this means that reality is far more precarious than we tend to think. When we think we live in a world of demonstrable facts, we're right in one sense and absolutely wrong in another. Human reality, for many, is largely subjective. And that's a pretty scary thing.