there& #39;s a lot of issues with this Tucker Carlson segment, but one claim stuck out to a friend of mine: according to Tucker, 64% of self-classified "liberal" White Americans have a diagnosed mental health condition.

As far as I can tell, this statistic is 100% incorrect.
(thread) https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1386837979453399049">https://twitter.com/justinbar...
The number comes from a Pew Research Center dataset, produced in late March 2020. ( https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/dataset/american-trends-panel-wave-64/)">https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/...
Pew provides an online report and the full, extremely dense dataset. Unfortunately, their report didn& #39;t mention Tucker& #39;s points, so we have to look at the dataset.
(Disclaimer: I& #39;m not a data scientist or psychologist, just a computer nerd. This was my first experience using R and statistical analysis software in general. If someone who knows this stuff disproves my conclusions here, you should probably listen to them)
If we load Pew& #39;s data, filter for White respondents, and apply Pew& #39;s weights, we get a table with two important percentage values: 26.4% "Liberal" respondents with a mental health condition, and 38.0% "Very liberal".

Add those together and you get 64.4%! So was Tucker right?
...Not even close. That& #39;s 26.4% of "Liberal"-identifying respondents - NOT all respondents - and 38% of "Very liberal"-identifying ones. You can& #39;t add them together like that, because with the way our data& #39;s represented, they& #39;re not parts of the same whole.
If we filter from our White respondents for "Liberal" and "Very liberal", and display that group& #39;s results, we get a whopping...
30% of liberal respondents with mental health conditions.

Which (through a cursory Google) seems to align with the national average, if a little high.
(FYI: The rate for White conservatives was 12%, with an overall rate of 17%. I think this difference could be chalked up to divergent attitudes about mental health - liberals might be more likely to see a professional of their own volition - but that& #39;s out of this thread& #39;s scope)
Obviously, the percentage being wrong isn& #39;t the biggest issue with Tucker& #39;s arguments.
Even if the 64% number was true, this survey would still include an untold number of people with ADHD, depression, anxiety - common conditions that go unnoticed and only harm those affected.
Lukewarm takes incoming:
People, and their opinions and concerns, are worth the same whether or not they have mental health issues.
Calling people who continue to use masks mentally ill and "neurotic" - dogwhistling for "dangerous" - is incorrect, disgusting, and harms EVERYONE.
Not big on deplatforming, but I have to question why Tucker Carlson is still regularly speaking on national television.

All I can do right now is hope and pray that maybe, someday, he (somehow) makes amends for being an ass.
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