A recent study from Xavier Uni­ver­si­ty tells us what many already know: that many Amer­i­cans have whol­ly tuned out of pol­i­tics to the point where they can’t even cor­rect­ly answer the most basic ques­tions about our gov­ern­ment. Indeed, as researchers dis­cov­ered, one in three native-born cit­i­zens can’t pass the civics por­tion of the nat­u­ral­iza­tion test we force legal immi­grants to pass when they want to become full citizens.

No doubt, it’s tempt­ing to look at the data and sim­ply agree with retir­ing U.S. Rep. Gary Ack­er­man (D‑NY), who last month made head­lines declar­ing that ​“peo­ple have got­ten dumb­er.” How­ev­er, there’s a flaw in such a con­clu­sion — name­ly, it wrong­ly assumes that know­ing the test’s infor­ma­tion is proof of brains or even good citizenship.

Peruse the test-prep flash­cards at the U.S. Cus­toms and Immi­gra­tion Ser­vice’s web­site, and you’ll see what I mean. After read­ing them, ask your­self whether you believe that, at the day-to-day lev­el, some­one real­ly must know all the his­to­ry ref­er­enced in order to be a smart per­son or func­tion­ing citizen.

Even as a his­to­ry enthu­si­ast, I don’t buy it. Yes, it prob­a­bly should be required that every­one know some­thing about slav­ery and the Civ­il War so that we all under­stand the cul­tur­al topog­ra­phy of mod­ern Amer­i­ca. But should the pre­req­ui­site for the label of ​“good cit­i­zen” or ​“smart” be know­ing who was pres­i­dent dur­ing World War I, what the orig­i­nal 13 colonies were or who wrote the fed­er­al­ist papers? Hard­ly. There are cer­tain­ly plen­ty of good Amer­i­can cit­i­zens and genius­es who don’t know those facts sim­ply because they aren’t rel­e­vant to dai­ly life.

Of course, when it comes to the ques­tions about how our con­sti­tu­tion and gov­ern­ment work, you could argue that it’s a bit dif­fer­ent. The­o­ret­i­cal­ly, these are facts you need to know to be an informed par­tic­i­pant in a democ­ra­cy. As the log­ic goes, with­out know­ing what the con­sti­tu­tion (sup­pos­ed­ly) does, it’s hard to know your rights. Sim­i­lar­ly, with­out being able to iden­ti­fy the politi­cians wield­ing pow­er on your behalf, it’s almost impos­si­ble to judge whether they are rep­re­sent­ing your inter­ests. Thus, you might con­clude that the Amer­i­cans who don’t know major amend­ments or can’t name their sen­a­tors are abhor­rent­ly stupid.

But again, that con­clu­sion sup­pos­es that there’s not a counter log­ic at work — when there almost cer­tain­ly is. It’s one in which many Amer­i­cans have con­scious­ly decid­ed that it’s not worth know­ing that infor­ma­tion, because they’ve log­i­cal­ly con­clud­ed that the infor­ma­tion no longer mat­ters in this country.

Remem­ber — 21st cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca is a place where elec­tions are bought and paid for by huge mon­ey, where pres­i­dents of both par­ties ignore the basic tenets of the con­sti­tu­tion, where the life­time-appoint­ed judi­cia­ry spends much of its time help­ing Big Busi­ness tilt the law against the pop­u­la­tion, and where the major par­ties resem­ble each oth­er on most poli­cies. Know­ing that, why should we expect smart cit­i­zens to com­mit the nat­u­ral­iza­tion test’s facts to mem­o­ry, when such facts are often irrel­e­vant to day-to-day reality?

This isn’t to defend stu­pid­i­ty. It is mere­ly an expla­na­tion of the rise of an unfor­tu­nate-but-under­stand­able form of will­ful igno­rance — the kind where­by many Amer­i­cans so accu­rate­ly per­ceive the fraud being per­pe­trat­ed on them that they have decid­ed to sim­ply tune out.

Sure, such a deci­sion inevitably makes a per­son less informed about the polit­i­cal world’s kabu­ki the­ater. But while you may dis­agree with that choice, it alone does­n’t prove a per­son is a bad cit­i­zen or dumb. That lat­ter label should be left to those polit­i­cal junkies, pun­dits and pro­fes­sion­al politi­cians who ignore incon­ve­nient truths about our bro­ken polit­i­cal sys­tem and dogged­ly pre­tend that Amer­i­ca is still a func­tion­ing democracy.