It is difficult for the government to understand what its citizens want for multiple reasons We are a nation comprised of hundreds of millions of people and opinions And as we will discuss further in length soon we are even opinionated about things in which we are uneducated There are three primary causes for the disconnect between government officials and their constituents the citizens themselves elected officials and the media Briefly citizens need to put forth more effort to be informed They need to be open for conversation open to allow their opinions to evolve and open to compromise The government needs to learn how to be more transparent and honest less power hungry and be more responsive to their constituents The media needs to be true to its ideals to provide unbiased news to educate its viewers As we noted in our class discussion about Public Opinion and Media post 5 we identified a key problem in our society today that we have a declining interest in educating ourselves A core reason that the US government does not know what the people want is because the people themselves do not know that they want Growing up in a house that closely followed current events after speaking with fellow Queens College students I noticed an absence in knowledge that many students have I do not think this is on purpose perhaps they do not see an incentive to engage in modern politics as there are far more entertaining things do it Or as we covered in post 9 discussing Common Interest Groups there is a diffusion of responsibility Maybe many feel with collective action their voice is unheard or someone else will take care of it so they do not bother educating themselves
