For information, feed yourself

This August, I felt people probably had their presidential picks in mind, so I began informally asking people who they were voting for and why. I got a milieu of responses: “I’m voting for Obama because he could be the first black president,” “I think McCain is honest” and “I want change.” I was shocked.

All these reasons seemed shallow. In fact, I felt sick. Their vote counts? So I asked one of them, “Well OK, what about health care? Why do you like Obama’s plan?” This lady’s response was, “He’ll modernize it.”

That’s it. That was her entire answer. It was like she had regurgitated some talking point. Modernize could have meant anything at this point. She couldn’t elaborate.
I was shocked at how uninformed people seemed. How could this be?

When I got home, like millions of Americans, I plopped down in front of the TV for some news. Actually, what was on was the ugliest dog show. I checked with the remote to make sure I was on the right channel. Yep, this is “the news.”

I waited out the last five minutes of the ugliest dogs you’ve ever seen to hear the angelic broadcast “This is World News Tonight” brought to you by “America’s number one source for news.”

Thank god, finally, I thought.

I sat there, waiting. Where’s the news? This is coverage of the Olympic Games. Is this ESPN? I checked the bottom right portion of the screen. No. I checked the remote again, this time to see if the batteries were bad. I swapped them out and waited.

No, no this is the ... news?! Well, if Michael Phelps ever runs for president, I’ll know a little more about him. But, what about Obama, McCain and their health care plans?
Deciding I still wanted to get information from the TV medium but seeing now that I needed to be a bit more proactive than just waiting around for my issues to come up on screen, I rented Micheal Moore’s health care documentary “Sicko.”

I finished it with a similar disgust – I think we’re all on board, the health care system needs reform–but it’s not that there’s something inherently evil about health insurance. It’s that these insurance companies are operating in a system of reverse incentives.
We’ve all already identified that there is a problem. What are our candidates’ solutions?

As soon as the movie was over, I got up and reverted back to my trusty computer, where I normally go, and googled “obama health care reform.”
While the page loaded, I sat thinking: What’s wrong with the world today? Is there no news? But wait, ah yes, there it was, information. Granted, the first few search results were a bit biased (Obama campaign headquarters), but eventually, after scrolling down the list you can dig up some good information from some pretty marginal, but respectable, sources.

In retrospect, this whole experience just convinces me the reason people are voting for superficial reasons is because they’re not given any information, unless they’re willing to take off the bib and feed themselves. And let’s face it, Americans are more likely to fill their Saturdays with barbecues and baseball than independent civic research.