One of the few “heated” arguments I’ve had with my father was when I was in college, and I came back home for fall break.
After running some errands with him, he drove me to the polling place and expected me to vote. I’d told him that, since I went to college halfway across the country, I hadn’t done much (if any) research into the candidates or issues. (This was for state / local candidates & issues) I told him I wasn’t going to cast an uninformed vote, and he told me that he would just tell me for whom I should cast my ballot.
I responded by saying I wouldn’t do any such thing, as I could be voting against my interests or beliefs. I remember sitting in the parking lot, us yelling at each other, until he finally gave up and took us back home.
You don’t have a responsibility to vote; you have a responsibility to cast an informed vote.
Bolding mine above – not uncommon elsewhere, too. The bolded sentence is an excellent description of Britain’s Daily Mail, at least 95% of the time. Nasty, nasty rag: I am almost totally, at pains to avoid it.
I haven’t watched TV news in years and never go to news sites unless I’m looking for more information on something. The only news I get directly is that I scan the headlines in our local newspaper’s smartphone app and occasionally click a story to read. Having said that, I’m not that poorly informed. I somehow absorb a fair bit of news without ever seeking it out, but I rarely get into any detail with any of it. At election time, I do read up on candidates, their position, brush up on the issues, etc, otherwise, I spend just minutes per week seeking out news.
I used to be a news junkie, reading everything I could on several news sites daily, listening to news and political podcasts, etc arguing politics with people. Then I realized that the world will go on exactly the same whether I know every little detail about it or not. Pretty much 100% of news doesn’t effect me in any way and my opinion, however well informed it may be, doesn’t effect the news either. Even if I get upset over Ferguson or worried about ISIS and wanted to do something about it, I would be powerless to do anything. In short, being well informed on the news is a complete waste of my time.
And, frankly, I am often baffled at people who don’t seem to understand how much time they’re wasting on these things. To me, the person who has a wealth of information, gossip and theories about Chuck Hagel’s resignation looks just as foolish as the person who doesn’t know who he is.