It’s certainly less upsetting, but I don’t think we should just try to avoid reading about the very real & very bad things that are happening when we have some power to address them.
The only power citizens have is in the election day, all the others days what can you do? Maybe go on the streets and protests but that almost never works.
IMO, we should read less political news, maybe once a week, if something major happens we will hear about it.
As the other reply points out, you can do things other than vote. Convincing like minded friends to get involved and convince their friends is very effective at the local scale. Local governments can improve—-or worsen—-life for their citizens dramatically (housing, food, health services, transportation, safety, etc).
On the larger scale, donations and canvassing matter. I feel like it’s a very safe assumption that the people frequenting this site have more resources (money, time, job options) than most.
You can put some of those resources to use by helping out candidates and campaigns you believe in. You can work with organizations who are working on the awful problems.
You can run for office yourself. I’ve seen acquaintances do it and win.
You can & should speak out and even quit if your company is doing something objectionable.
These are all a lot harder than just angrily watching the news (or hate-reading HN). It requires actual work and possibly significant personal sacrifice. I’m not always as good about it as I should be, but I feel confident that I’m getting better, and that those around me are too. It gets easier every day.
On a personal note: I’m an atheist and my parents mostly were too, but we were raised going to Quaker meeting. These days I find myself thinking about those Sunday school classes a lot. They were mostly focused on this kind of message (they were surprisingly secular). I wish I’d paid more attention. I might have started paying attention to this kind of thing earlier.
[edit] I totally forgot to reply to the "if something major happens we will hear about it" part:
What you consider "major" matters a lot though. Things you might normally think nothing about affect other people a lot. Also, at least in my circles, people talk way more about national news than local news, so I can't rely on hearing stuff through the grapevine.
I think it's a basic civic responsibility to keep yourself informed. It's also something most of us need to be better about.
Thanks for the response, I will think more on it and see if I can apply something(some things may not work for my personality or my local.country politics)
What I mean by major things you will find out about it is that usually there is nothing that happens n one day and you will miss it by not reading the news that day, laws get debated a lot, ton of noise is happening and here in Romania large protests happen (though not major changes actually come from those)
I admit that I am a cynic and I see all the parties as the same level of corruption and incompetence due to my observation that only some type of personality can go up the ladder.
The point about trying to convince your friends or relatives, does it ever work? I never seen someone let be convinced by arguments, they always watch same TV channels, read same papers you can't produce a change in a heated debate.
I am curious if you think that is any issue in getting informed at the end of the week, what could have happened that you getting informed with a few days delay mattered ?
If is important you would hear about it on the non political channels/papers or from other places.
About the effectiveness of convincing friends & relatives: I know what you mean about skepticism about changing people's minds. It's hard, and I certainly don't think you'll realistically ever flip someone's deeply held belief on its head with a clever argument. The most effective thing I feel like I can do personally is push people who are already mostly on board with something out of complacency and toward action. For people who disagree with me more strongly, I just try to continually nudge them in my direction since that seems to be more effective than shutting them off.
About how frequently you actually need to read the news: if you're asking "do things move fast enough that hearing about an event when it happens vs a few days later matters?", then no, I don't think it does, and for some things you really need to wait before there's any useful information. But, at least personally, I don't think I could dedicate a block of time on the weekend to reading up on the events of the week. I follow some journalists on Twitter as well as some folks focused on local matters, and ask my brother questions about things I hear since he has more experience and I'm still relatively new to all this. Also, newspapers are great!
Lastly, about all parties being equally corrupt: I think they're all corrupt, but I don't think they're equal in either the degree of corruption or in the magnitude of harm their policies & discourse cause. On just one current issue: it's hard not to look at consistently Republican-lead policies that disproportionately disenfranchise black people and think that one side is very much worse here. Even if both sides are trying to stop their opponents from getting more votes, one side is clearly being more ruthless & cruel. Again, this is just one issue, but it's a big one and I believe there's plenty of evidence that this isn't an isolated case.
Thanks again for your reply,
I am also getting information from my brother related to politics and sports since he keeps a closer eyes on this topics.
I agree is impossible to have a rigorous way of comparing the party corruption but I think that always the party in power will use all it can to win the next election, like voting populist laws, changing electoral rules and here in Romania attacking the justice department that is investigating the politicians and changing laws so most corrupt politicians won't be put in jail but keep their freedom.
