Stateside with Rosalea: Pulling Rank

Forget racism, sexism or ageism. Rankism is the new target for social philosophers here in the United States. It's a concept that can be applied to all levels of a person's life from the intimate to the global.

As Robert W. Fuller says in his book Somebodies and Nobodies, we must examine rank "as it functions among friends and colleagues, and within organizations. We must ask what its proper use is in families, schools, religious institutions, health care organizations, unions, the workplace, and in our nation's international relations." One of Fuller's beliefs is that so long as the US keeps treating other nations as nobodies then it will always be a target for terrorists.

Election season is prime time for rank pulling, and nothing pulls rank on an individual's opinion more than a poll result. The idea that, if your opinion didn't equate with the opinion expressed by the biggest grouping of those polled then it is an inferior opinion allows a force of opinion to build in a manner that is easily manipulated and therefore not necessarily very healthy.

For those obsessed with polls, here is a website with a very easy-to-use interface that posts poll results by state as they come to hand and extrapolates them into electoral college votes. It also has a link to a page where you can learn how to encourage Americans who are living overseas to vote: http://www.electoral-vote.com/

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