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Friday, November 22, 2024 at 1:59 PM

Demographics

“Demographics” comes from Greek for people (demos) and writing (graphein). Merriam-Webster defines it as “the statistical characteristics of human populations (such as age or income) used especially to identify markets.”

Obviously, it gets its most prominent and profitable use from the advertising industry. Identify the psychology of the people your client’s product might appeal to and then structure the advertising that they would be most drawn to.

The “Marlboro Man” comes to my mind most quickly. Here’s the rugged, independent cowboy astride his mighty steed, with a mountainous western panorama in the background and a cigarette heroically hanging from his lower lip.

What young man wouldn’t want to be just like him?

What’s most unique to this product is, that by the time that young man has weathered the sissy hacking, coughing, and retching from the smoke, he’s become addicted to the nicotine he’s forced down his lungs.

Of course, the reverse of this process works, too. Create a product that plays on a person’s fear (baldness, wrinkles, loneliness, forgetfulness, pimples), greed, or gullibility, then go out and find the market for what that “panacea” is purported to cure.

We’ve just ended our quadrennial bout of presidential marketing. As with all marketing, this campaign had its share of truths and lies, brilliancies and gaffes. The voter has to be able to sift through all the rhetoric for the differences and the truths.

And, of course, deal with all the voter demographics that each news source has gleaned for their prognostications.

We’ve been told how the white males vote, how the Black males vote; how the white women vote, how the Black women vote; how students vote, how Hispanics vote, how East Asians vote, how sub-Asians vote, how Muslims vote, how Catholics vote, how Jews vote, how Evangelicals vote … I could go on, but the list of all the “demographically identifiable groups” is lengthy. There must be scores more, limited only by the number of United States citizens.

Do any two people think exactly alike? In reality, every person is his or her own demographic.

The first of November the population of our country was 346,048,081. We’re the third most populated country in the world and the most populated country in the Western Hemisphere.

In 2020, 158.4 million people voted in the presidential race. According to the Pew Research Center, that was only 62.8% of the eligible voters. That means that 252.2 million people were eligible to vote.

252,000,000 individual demographics, and the statisticians try to read the tea leaves based on a dozen or so groupings of disparate citizens because of their sex, race, ethnicity, religion, or age.

The one thought and commitment that we citizens of the United States of America must share – a universal demographic – is the sanctity of our Constitution and the rule of law. We might not agree with all the laws, but those laws invite legal challenges. We can add amendments to that statement of our community or repeal them when we differ with them. We can make adjustments when we perceive a threat to our community.

To live together we have accepted that the majority vote determines the outcome on all issues, with the courts and the Constitution always on guard to protect the minority from bad actions and laws of the majority.

We might not embrace all the decisions of our elected officials, but we agree that, barring malfeasance or criminal conduct, the redress of our differences is the next election. I’m a patriot. Whatever the outcome of yesterday’s voting, I will accept its validity after any and all legal challenges have been resolved by the courts.

It has been what every American president after George Washington has accepted.

Save one. Only one candidate for that office in our history has chosen to deny its legitimacy. Only one candidate, with no evidence, has fomented a riot to actually overthrow the will of the majority.

If that candidate has lost, we can expect the same violence and divisive discord we saw beginning in 2020 that continues today.

History shows what happens when Americans forget our pledge to that Constitution and our responsibility to be good citizens, respecting one another in the legal pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.

We must stand fast against those who would change our rules for their selfish reasons and protect our unity and the institutions that make our country strong.


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Dr. Ronald Laub DDS
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