view the rest of the comments
politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
I've often thought it would be informative to have candidates take the citizenship test.
Most natural-Americans would fail.
You’re right though. It would be.
I found a sample test with 133 questions. I got 126 of them for 94.74%.
There were a few history questions that threw me, specifically related to the federalist papers of which I've got scant little memory.
I felt like the rest of it was pretty straightforward. I also think recent divisiveness has made a lot of the questions related to how the federal government is structured a lot easier.
As to your assertion that most natural Americans would fail, I'd flip a coin on that. Maybe? Probably?
Those of us on lemmy are probably outliers.
Assuming most Americans couldn't pass it, that explains a ton of politician rhetoric. They say things that are functionally impossible, but if the voter Is entirely unaware of how the government is structured and functions, then they'll eat it up and cast their vote, frequently against their own well being.
The vast, vast majority of voters have no idea how government works. And this is actually one of the few things that both sides are guilty of: incredibly uninformed voters.
The way our government works is actually pretty complicated and I'm confident in saying that most Americans have only a very basic understanding of it. That's also largely not their fault. Civics education in this country is a joke.
It does make them very easy to lie to or mislead.
When I became a citizen there was no written test. The guy did ask 3 questions:
What's the carrying capacity of a swallow?
African or European?
2 henways.