Giving up reading news will make us happier

Depends on the person, I suppose. Most people go into voting booths fairly poorly-informed, so really any research you do is great.

I don't think normal humans will do homework before voting, since normal American humans vote pretty infrequently to begin with. But I think doing such homework can be a great alternative to staying engaged with the news consistently - I do it (sometimes/reasonably often but certainly not always) when voting for judges, or offices that never come up in the news I read.

The problem with that approach, beyond remembering to do your homework, is that it can be kinda hard to catch up on everything. Like, let's say there's something your mayor does that you hate, or would hate if you knew about it - are you sure that's gonna come up during your research? If it's a big deal it might.

A bold piece. I'm glad he was allowed to publish it.

Well, to be blunt, if Bernie vs. Clinton is your framework then you a) probably think that my far left politics are unrealistic to the point of insanity and b) have political goals that are well within the liberal mainstream of US politics. That's just a guess, and I'll own that I could be wrong.

You are totally correct that there is no advantage in waiting for an opportunity or some perfect candidate. At the same time, things like welfare to work projects or DREAM acts are not solutions if you want the end of wage labor and the dissolution borders. I don't think electoral politics are going to be able achieve my political goals.

Within your political spectrum, you are probably correct that ignoring the news and failing to phone bank are positions of privilege. Your politics aren't the only ones that people hold here.

I don't expect you to concede to my point that your position indicates that, in the main, you believe that the system you are in "works"; most likely, you'd maintain that your desire to modify that system indicates your dissatisfaction, and that your anger towards the news and support of various reformist politicians is evidence of that dissatisfaction. Once again, those are my assumptions, and I could be wrong about your position.

However, I simply don't believe that politics, as they work where I live, allow for the kinds of changes that I would need in order to feel that I live in a just, verdant, and equitable system. So I don't feel bad in ignoring the news and just doing my best to make things better where I am.

My point is having access of information is not a useful variable to define enlightment.

Entairtainment content is much worse then commercials. If PowerRangers are stupid for you, to me all movies and shows are as stupid as PowerRangers, as all of them use fake character building to touch someone's heart (mom got cancer, dad left, girlfriend cheating) they include 'all of the above' to touch as much of the audience as possible, only small part are passive and cold to the lure reach, most are lured in and hooked and are now users of the entairtainment industry. Facebook (friend news) and real news are no beter then this, not even sports are better then this nowdays, before sports were about sport now they use the same techniques as fiction novels and movies do, they build character, they show life of Shaqile Oneal what he does when he doesn't play for instance charity donations, community reach etc, they make stars out of players and everyone has their favorite, muslims like Ronaldo cuz he been to a mosque, jews like Messi cuz, well whatever u get the point, noone would watch South American volleyball or basketball team or Saudi Arabian football league because why, yes u guessed it, you don't know anyone there, there are no characters, only those people there know the players so they watch them. And what happens after the game, an hour of talk "player did this he did that, couach did this did that, should have done that and this and instead now we have this, he gets what he asked for, need a better coach" or whatever, then you listen to those people analyze the game to get you thinking, get your thoughts circling around the same thing, then you go to a bar with your friends order a beer and repeat the same thing those people on tv said, or you throw in your own opinion, cuz who needs those stupid analyzers on tv when you know better, Zlatan Ibrahimovic yey, no I really like that guy as a dude, I could care less about his abilities, I mean he's the new Chuck Norris, he hurt his knees went to a doctor and the doctors wanted to study him because of how good of a shape his knees were haha... anyway, cocky dude. But he's real, noone made him out like that, he made his own character. It's because we do in real life remember characters as we perceive them with values we recognize, because the ones we don't recognize we just havent learned yet, but the problem with fake characters is that they are fake, and people who watch more then 8 hours a day of tv shows or sports really get immersed into those characters that it's a disease, it's an addiction that hasn't been diagnosed yet, Tupac said he didn't promote Thug Life he diagnosed it, he really did. If average US citizen watches 8 hours a day of TV, that means that on the extreme ends of this line there's a dude who watches 0 hours of TV, I saw a guy comment here he don't watch TV, but then this also means that there's that dude who watches 16 horus a day, everything over 2hrs a day is a disease, if you don't know how to select what you watch, and I do mean if you don't watch 'Life of Birds' "Planet Earth" and other shows narrated by David Attenborough you are being dummbed down by occupying your mind with thoughts of the round ball, players, fake characters, made up stories that touch your heart and soul, you're an addict of a storyline and the only place you actually think is while taking a shit on the toilet because there is no TV there, but sometimes even there you bring your cell phone or a news paper and out of a 100% of the day you turn the thinking part of the brain on for 0% and now it's just repetitious things like, today they scored 75, tomorrow 65, tomorrow 32, fauls 32, etc, when you ask a person what you think about so and so, most will not actually 'think' but rather will just pull out an already thought-out thought they had prepared earlier when they were sitting on the toilet thinking, as when you watch tv you don't really think, you just emotionaly invest yourself and your memory to those characters, unless you can rise above this and tune it out , watching static on tv, or a turned off tv, or better yet wathing a blank wall of your house is much healthier than watching tv if you do not choose what to watch, and i do mean documentaries about knowledge that is good and not knowledge how to rob a bank and brew coke, i mean either history biology sciences religion sociology etc etc, all other is a waiste of life and of time. It's really bad when people start to tell me about what they saw on TV, sports or Turkish series, and I'm like if I wanted to waste my time I'd watch it myself, you don't have to advertise it for me. So no, ads are not actually worse then the actual content, ads are just selling product, but also using the same techique, character building, where they have cute fuzzy little animals or hearts or baby faces on toilet paper, dude why is there a baby on my toilet paper plastic wrapper/bag/container, is it because the toilet paper is soft and babies cheeks are also soft, or is it because the paper is soft enough for a babies soft butt, idk, but this is just so it's cute and you buy it, i mean you can't really sell toilet paper with Hitler's face on it now can you. So no, propaganda is in the movies and the entairtainment, only you don't see it, all of these things are there put in place to take away your thinking time of the day where you could be thinking smart thoughts, as Einstein did in his 'thinking room', they lure you in to think about them, and to subscribe for 5.99 Nba APP, and even if you don't , yo might think they don't get nothing from me, yes they do, you go and tell your family about sports movies and then they buy it, your friends buy it, the whole world is hooked. As my grandmother used to say, 'you can't sit on two chairs with one ass' you can either study or go to bar, not both at the same time, but while you watch tv you're not reading about "light, frequency, electromagnetism, synesthesia, fungi" idk universe? there are many things we don't know and ahvent learned but we settle for some dudes rolling a circular round ball or throwing it and we sit there brain dead and stare at the idiot box and when someone says idiot box we say no tv doesn't make you stupider, no it just makes you a smart idiot who could be talking to his daughter but rather instead watches tv where there is a fake dad talking to his fake daughter and you cry inside, it's all a trick to separate you from family, and while you might think watching tv together is a form of communication, no communication happens while watching some other people do their thing while you don't do anything you just watch, all you do is watch and you don't do anything, people are zombies. Thats why i turned off facebook and I'm here now on Hacker news as there is smart educational content here and not just gossip, i have to stop writing now my blood pressure is climbing. Try to stay away from TV for a few days, you'll get the same reaction as trying to stay away from cigarettes, and mind you, nicotine exits the blood stream fairly quickly so on the third day all there is is the psychological addiction as the physical nicotine is long gone. habbits are very powerful and whats inertia, resistance to change. Change dude, dont watch TV don't let them make u a sucker, you're not a sucker are you, you are if you wanna be, don't be, read a book, not a fiction book, book of knowledge, here'a an author Al Ghazali, go see what he did. Iron is not a native element of Earth, it's formed in stars much hotter then our Sun, Sun is not hot enough to create the element, so it descended down to earth and now it's here, and we make useful things from it and there's hemoglobin too. Turn the TV off.