The Washington Post published an interesting visualization. They asked people two questions:
- Where is Ukraine on the map?
- What should the US do with this Ukraine-issue?
The answers to the first question are summarized in the following map.
16% of the respondents correctly placed Ukraine on the map, the median response was within 1800 mile radius.
In general, younger Americans tended to provide more accurate responses than their older counterparts: 27 percent of 18-24 year olds correctly identified Ukraine, compared with 14 percent of 65+ year-olds. Men tended to do better than women, with 20 percent of men correctly identifying Ukraine and 13 percent of women. Interestingly, members of military households were no more likely to correctly locate Ukraine (16.1 percent correct) than members of non-military households (16 percent correct), but self-identified independents (29 percent correct) outperformed both Democrats (14 percent correct) and Republicans (15 percent correct).
Here comes the fun part: the correlation between the first and the second question.
However, the further our respondents thought that Ukraine was from its actual location, the more they wanted the U.S. to intervene militarily.
I would like to ask: what are those 5 dots doing on US soil, 20 dots if you include Alaska as well? Same applies to Australia – I mean, come on, it’s kind of hard to miss where Australia is, so clearly that can’t be Ukraine. What about those dots in the ocean?
What about the million dots in Russia? If Ukraine were part of Russia, we wouldn’t be talking about this conflict right now.
Conclusion: Before you voice your opinion, make sure you have a good understanding of the circumstances, geographical locations included.