An Ohio pig farmer was upset about a thing that happened on Nov. 8 2016, so he has stopped reading news of a political nature. He looks at the weather report and tends to his pig farm. He has no idea what is going on. He says he is a little bored, but it is not too bad.
I am not so sure I could do that.
I have a good friend who became a news junkie during the 2016 election. Over a year later and he can barely talk about anything else, he’s pissed off all the time, and his blood pressure is through the roof.
I was in danger of that, too. So, since I usually learn best from bad examples, I’ve cut back a lot. And I’ll occasionally take a weekend off from all media (social or anti-). And once I quit The Dope for a week.
Even just avoiding my usual hourly “Just a quick check of CNN, TPM, MPSIMS and The Pit” for a day, I can feel my heart rate and BP decreasing.
That strikes me as the equivalent of refusing to go to the doctor because he might tell you you’re sick. Not knowing about the problem does nothing to solve the problem.
Suppose you know you have a disease about which you can do nothing, and which may or may not kill you or make you clinically insane, or may just go away. In that situation I don’t see spending much time or money on useless doctors.
And did I hear you say
he was meeting you here today
to take you to his mansion in the sty?
How do you know what disease you have if you don’t go to the doctor? You just know you have pains in your stomach. You might have a fatal and incurable condition. But you might have an ulcer which can be treated in which case you’re suffering needlessly. Or you might have appendicitis, which can be treated but which will kill you if left untreated. And even if you do have untreatable cancer, at least you’ll know to start settling your affairs.
Besides, disease isn’t a good metaphor for the Trump administration. The Trump Administration is more like a hurricane or a tornado. And like those natural disasters, you’re smart to keep an eye on it so you know which direction it’s currently moving in and what shelter is appropriate.
That’s very porkuliar.
I think it is, really. About 8 years ago we started developing these growths. In that time, they spread, but were kept in check. This is the stage where they have gotten out of control. The immune system is currently under suppression: unless that suppression can be reversed, the national organism will fail, probably in spectacular fashion. Not something to look forward to.
Heck, I have never cared much about politics. I couldn’t tell you a single member of the political scene other then the president. I haven’t watched any network news in decades. Of course hanging out here does give one a sense of what is going on.
Dennis
Talk about living in a bubble.
It’s all well and good for your blood pressure and piece of mind to ignore politics, but when the government trucks roll up to take your children away to fight in some sort of death games and you don’t know what they’re talking about, maybe isolationism wasn’t that good an idea. 
On the other hand, I’m reminded of that scene in The Thin Red Line where the troops pass this local islander (farmer?) just going about his business, apparently completely oblivious to the fact there is a world war going on. And he probably never knew, just tells stories about the day all these strange guys passed through.
Really, political activity for the vast majority of Americans means voting once every four years. And a lot of people don’t even do that much. So if the news isn’t going to affect the choices you make on a daily basis, and reading/listening to it is infuriating (as opposed to merely entertaining), then what’s the point?
There is of course the risk of being totally unaware of an impending apocalypse that absolutely will affect you. But you will need to weigh the tiny probability of that against the high probability of news-induced hypertension.