Maybe ...

People should pay more attention. Digby's right, and its one of my pet peeves; people don't know enough about how our government works or what the issues are really about. It's your country, people. What those weasels in Washington do affects us directly. Why wouldn't someone want to be as informed as possible?

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Everyone in the place was complaining about the insurance companies and how broken the system was. But they were also convinced that the Democrats are trying to pass socialized medicine. When I asked what they thought that meant, they said, "government takeover of health care." And they were seriously worried about how that was going to affect them.

I don't know where these people are getting this. They aren't political, they don't listen to talk radio or read blogs. This is just what's out in the ether, what people are saying in casual conversation. The ear worm is "we've got a problem, but the Democrats are going to take over health care and make things worse." It's not entirely surprising, but it's depressing nonetheless.

Voter apathy is one of the things that really annoys me, along with being misinformed. In this day and age, with the advent of the intarwebs, there is no excuse for not getting what's going on in the government, be it local, state, or federal.

It seems to me, the people who bitch the loudest don't vote and have no clue of what they're really bitching about. To those who don't vote: Shaddap! To those ignorant of the issues: Go find out before you open your trap!

Now, I can tell from the first sentence if someone watches Fox 'News' or not. Usually I don't waste my time with people who watch Fox. It just ain't worth it because they generally don't want to hear anything. The plain old uninformed are fun to watch as their expression changes when you calmly explain what some piece of legislation means to them. You see the light bulb go on over their heads.

Example:

Customer/Acquaintance/Friend: "Obama's gonna raise taxes to pay for health care."

Me: "Do you make more than $250K/year?"

C/A/F: "Are you kidding?"

Me: "Then you have nothing to worry about."

C/A/F: "No shit?"

Me: "Dude/Dudette, 95% of Americans won't get a tax increase. Only the really rich are gonna pay more and even those making $250K will only pay 1% more."

C/A/F: "That's not bad."

Me: "Indeed. Go now, and spread the word ..."

I'm tired of people pulling stuff out their ass on subjects they know very little to nothing about. I get it a lot in the car business, folks who think they know something about cars lecturing me. Do they realize, when they flap their traps to an expert on the subject, they just come off sounding like a bigger moron? Just because their buddy or some moron on TV says something doesn't make it accurate or true.

Listen, the reason the Chimp and his henchmen got away with so much is that nobody ever questioned anything, nobody doing anything but the most superficial thinking about the threat from Iraq, or how innocent people ended up at Gitmo, or how the government tapped your phones and read your email without warrant - I could go on forever. Yes, our lapdog news media shoulders a lot of blame but if our populace weren't so ignorant, they wouldn't have gotten away with so much.

There are very few people I trust with my future or my money, certainly no one in Washington. While I can't grab them by the balls and win their hearts and minds, I sure as hell keep an eye on what they're doing to protect myself from their fuckups. If you don't know, or don't care, then you can't bitch about what they do to you.