Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Help, I'm trapped in an echo chamber!

As I've mentioned before, elections are my favourite sport. But because I love following them so closely, reading between the lines of platforms, thinking about strategy, I've lost the ability to view them like a regular everyday person who isn't especially into elections. I just can't put myself in their shoes.

The last couple of elections, I've heard pundits say "Voters will do X in response to Y", and thought "There's no possible way the general populace is that stupid!", only to find out after election day that someone I thought I liked and respected (and sometimes even someone who's supposed to be smarter than me!) did X in response to Y. I don't know what to do with this.

Sometimes people catch a glimpse of an election-related headline and get an incorrect idea about something. And by incorrect I mean empirically verifiable as false. But if I respond with a nice readable media article, they assume it's just spin or bias. And if I respond with links to primary sources, they don't want to read all those boring documents anyway. I keep encountering people who aren't political junkies and who are voting wrong (and by "wrong" I mean "in a way that does not help achieve what it will achieve, when voting differently would help achieve their goal") and I don't know how to get through to them.

And yes, I realize that not being able to put myself in the shoes of people who aren't political junkies when I haven't always been a political junkie meets my own definition of assholery. I just can't figure out what to do about it.

No comments: