Are you a paid political troll or real American? Find out by taking our quiz
For those of you who don’t know, I used to be a college professor. What I professed, well, that’s another story. I miss teaching and part of teaching was to test student knowledge. With that said, I bring you 5 Questions Every American Should Know. So, take a sip of that egg nog and put your thinking cap on.
Pencils at the ready, steady, go…
1) True or False: Is the practice of “non-lethal force” by police really non-lethal?
The answer is false. Non-lethal is, at times, a less-lethal option, but when 42 people die from tasers every year, then it might be worth investigating the proper use or the lethality of such devices. By the way, that number, according to Amnesty International, is 540 deaths since 2001.
2) Where does the United States Rank among these countries according to the Global Peace Index of 2013? The countries are Canada, Poland, UK, South Korea, The United States, China, Afghanistan, Switzerland, Iceland and Japan.
Okay, this is a bit tricky, the rules are you have to have a population of more than a million people and have more than 20,000 square kilometers of area to be entered in this ranking. The ranking includes everything from number of people jailed per 100,000; number of deaths due to war; and violent crimes.
The correct order is: Iceland (number 1 out of 162), Switzerland, Japan, Canada, Poland, UK, South Korea (yes, a country with an active war zone), The United States (at number 99 out of 162), China (101 out of 162), and Afghanistan bringing up the rear at 162 out of 162. If you guessed eighth, you are correct.
What does this mean all mean? Well, apparently the US is worse off than a country with an active war zone and far worse than our neighbor Canada (8th), but at least we beat Mexico (133rd). Now the telling tale, we are closer, far closer to Mexico (a country where we’re basically told not to visit due to drug war related homicides) than we are to Canada. To be fair though, Canada does get pretty loopy around National Maple Syrup Day…
3) Between Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Libya, and the United States. Where does the US rank according to Amnesty International, for the number of people sentenced to death from 2007-12.
The US has more people sentenced to death than the other countries combined. That’s right, more than Saudi Arabia, Iran, Libya and North Korea combined. That’s just death row though; we do lose out to Iran and Saudi Arabia in actually carrying capital punishment. So, we are a vengeful, but incompetent race of killers.
4) In which country is being transgendered more legally accepted? Iran or the US?
Only one country is the self-proclaimed bastion of freedom and equality, but we, the United States and our exceptionalism includes being a country who loses to a theocracy in terms of how the law sees transgendered people. That’s right, according to the BBC’s Vanessa Barford, even though homosexuality is banned in Iran, being transsexual and having sexual reassignment surgery is legally encouraged since the Ayatollah Khomeini stated it in 1979. Yes, in a way, Iran has been more progressive than the United States on transgender issues for over 3 decades.
5) According to The Guardian’s report on Times Higher Education, which of the following countries holds the most universities in the top 10 rankings: UK, Japan, USA, Canada, or Germany.
This is the double-edged sword for American hope. The US holds 7 out of the top 10 rankings. The US also holds the most out of the top 100, although it is important to note that only Harvard, MIT, Cambridge, Oxford, Berkeley and Stanford are actually regarded really beyond the rest of the list while the others are a bit of a toss-up. Still, the US dominates that list. Now the bad news; the US also dominates the amount of money that is required to get into and attend those colleges on the list, whereas our UK counterpart is not structured financially as such.
What does this mean? It means that we enjoy an educational boost, but only the wealthiest, not necessarily the most deserving students can take advantage of it.
So, how did you do? Are you a Real American or just a Canadian on a maple syrup high who stumbled upon this quiz by accident?
0-1 correct – Paid Political Troll. You may have donkeys or elephants flying out of your nose when sneezing, and out of your other orifices whilst talking.
2-3 correct – Duck Huntin’ Season Enthusiast. Your NRA membership might be expiring soon, but at least you can still legally eliminate the people who scored higher than you in Florida.
4 correct – Google Bot. You may have gone to one of those colleges from question 5, or maybe you just Googled it. Either way, you embody everything the US should be.
5 correct – Real American! Hulk Hogan and Stephen Colbert had a love child and if that love child drank PBR instead of milk from a bottle, then that person would be you! My hats off to you, and beneath that hat, another more awesome hat called the American flag bandana.
