I don't think following the news is the only way to gain knowledge of the issues. Online discussion forums and books are two other options.

Or they could do actual research instead of reading the "news" - which largely amounts to professional blogging these days. Following the news does not make one more knowledgeable about politics or current events necessarily. Some of the most ill-informed people I know watch news regularly. There's no guarantee that news is accurate or balanced in it's reporting.

Right, when it comes voting time look at actions a candidate took and what they said they would do. Make your judgements from there and vote. That's all that matters. Everything else is like watching a drama.

But most people are politically active once a year (if that), not every 15 minutes.

And I'd also add that it's hardly even a well conceived process. Most people ideologically align themselves one way or the other and then vote that way, regardless of anything else.

For instance Chicago has been exclusively under one party's exclusive control for going on 90 years now. And so this party has had decades to carry out whatever grand vision they could ever imagine for the city. So we'd expect to see what this grand vision would culminate in. And we see a city with a broken school system, rampant crime, tremendous financial problems, horrible inequity, and that is just in general - broken.

Yet the people keep voting for the exact same party and general ideologies. It's just not logical, but it's how most people operate on most topics. They pick a conclusion they want to be true, and then find evidence to support it, instead of examining the evidence to come to the most reasonable conclusion. Perhaps in large part because the latter process often yields conclusion that we very much don't want to be true.

Politics aren’t the only way to change the status quo. In fact they’re not good at it at all. Uber and AirBnB changed the status quo far more than any politician in my lifetime.

Also, most people’s personal issues trump any macro issue by far. You can change your status quo. It’s almost impossible for an individual to change the status quo and definitely not through typical political engagement.

>Uber and AirBnB changed the status quo far more than any politician in my lifetime.

I am sorry, but that is just depressing if you believe something like that. The ACA is one thing that comes to mind. Improving healthcare for Americans would have a much bigger impact on people's lives than giving people who already own a home a way to make a little extra money.

The ideal of improving healthcare has little to do with how the ACA turned out.

> Politics aren’t the only way to change the status quo.

The status quo is a political arrangement. It's just a way of referring to the state of power's distribution across institutions and people. That's political.

There is literally, definitionally nothing apolitical that affects the status quo.

Changing the status quo is--inescapably, apodictically--political.

Uber and AirBnB are highly political institutions.

By this definition literally every interaction with the outside world is political. Is a definition that broad really useful?

When people talk about politics they’re almost always talking about interfacing with the government. Taking an Uber is definitely not a political statement in most people’s minds.

It may not be a political _statement_, but it has political _consequences_.

Ignoring nth-order consequences doesn't make them go away.