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Comment by carlosjobim | Hacker News Reader

> EU citizens haven't been brainwashed into thinking that their government is their enemy, at least not to the same extent as the US.

US citizens haven't been brainwashed into thinking that their government is their friend, at least not to the same extent as the EU.

Honestly, if you talk to real people within the EU, you'll find that maybe half of them are mostly against the EU. Real life is not the same as HN, because most citizens are not part of the "elite" that benefits the most from EU programs and systems. Like all governments there are very good things about the EU and very bad things. And somebody has to pay for their maintenance.

You should be concerned if your thought patterns are healthy if you dismiss everybody with a different opinion as yours as "brainwashed". It doesn't help you in the long run.

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> Honestly, if you talk to real people within the EU, you'll find that maybe half of them are mostly against the EU.

There is exactly one country where that is true: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/10/24/people-br...

Across the EU, it's one third (i.e. a two-to-one majority sees the EU positively)

> Honestly, if you talk to real people within the EU, you'll find that maybe half of them are mostly against the EU.

The polling seems to be proving you wrong. Even in the UK the attitude towards the EU seems to be net positive.

I wrote "if you talk to people", which is different from what a poll might say. Yes, it's anecdotal.

I talk to people here in the EU, and most of my anecdotes support the EU, even the ones with reservations regarding it.

So anecdotes don't matter in this discussion.

That is because most polling is not a representative sample of peoples' beliefs and is untrustworthy. The "mainstream" polling and coverage of Brexit is a great example, or the polling and coverage around the 2016 US presidential election.

Time to mention the Yes Prime Minister clip on polling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gMcZic1d4U

Perfect video. Youtube is blocking it outside of the UK. VPN with UK exit IP seems to work.

How’d that work out for you with the Brexit vote? Still placing your undivided faith in polls by people that benefit from presenting a particular ideology as being popular?

It's a sort of a myth that Brexit polling got it wrong [1]. There was a visible surge for Leave just before the referendum, and the result did not surprise me.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_Unit...

> US citizens haven't been brainwashed into thinking that their government is their friend, at least not to the same extent as the EU.

> Honestly, if you talk to real people within the EU, you'll find that maybe half of them are mostly against the EU.

Are you sure these two claims aren't contradictory? Go on, give it a few minutes of thought.

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Let us be perfectly clear here. People in the EU love to grumble about the EU, like every single human being everywhere loves to grumble about their government. Like all systems made of humans, the EU has big flaws, which everybody acknowledges, although they might not completely agree on what exact set of traits counts as flaws.

That does not mean the large majority of EU citizens seriously thinks the EU should be replaced with something else. Even less so now that the UK went and made itself a cautionary tale of what may happen when you try too hard to use said grumbling as a political tool to pursue your own selfish interests.

>That does not mean the large majority of EU citizens seriously thinks the EU should be replaced with something else.

Who are you quoting when you write "large majority"? I wrote "maybe half", and that's my assessment from talking to people. As for the UK, that's still to be seen. The last time they decided to stand on the side of European unification, it turned out they made the right choice – while still paying a very high price for that choice.

And how biased is your sample? Also, of course we have to have a baseline of being even reasonably informed of the cost/benefit landscape. People who are actively being lied to don’t and cannot count.

People who have a different opinion than you do, do not and cannot count, got it. Because clearly they've been lied to. Your attitude is exactly why I recommend hackers here to go talk to people in real life about these things.

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