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The Facts Don't Matter

Since I talk about politics so much, I hear plenty about the latest court case or shooting or whatever. While the rest of the internet fights over them, my position has generally been "I haven't looked into it because it doesn't matter". And to some people this might sound insane. Let me save your time, relationships and sanity.

If I'm not in a position to act on it, why exactly do I need to be informed about it? What value will come of my being informed that exceeds the value I can produce doing something else?

That's it. That's my great wisdom. Reflect on this.

But not only is it pointless to be informed, there's a huge social problem of not understanding that not everyone is informed. This is what can destroy your relationships and sanity. I can't think of a better example than the 2020/08 shooting of protesters in Kenosha by Kyle Rittenhouse.

The arguments weren't about ideology at all, everyone just had different information. Everyone had seen different clips of video and read different articles. But nobody fucking understood:

If you say that Kyle murdered protesters, then you're a Marxist terrorist supporter who doesn't believe in self-defense because *everyone* knows they attacked him unprovoked and were going to kill him. And did we mention the people he shot were all already violent criminals?

If you say that Kyle defended himself, you're a fascist who supports murdering people for protesting against police brutality because *everyone* knows he actually killed someone for throwing a plastic bag at him and then killed three more people who tried to apprehend him.

No one didn't have an opinion. You couldn't get away from it; the whole internet was drooling ideologues who can't understand that someone else might just have different information. If you said anything about it, you were the enemy team and were pure evil to the half of the country who disagreed.

And it wasn't just the usual Republican/Democrat drones making this mistake. I saw libertarians at each other's throats over it. *That* is why this message is important.