I’m here to say that the wisdom that comes with getting older is almost enough to compensate for the unmistakable slowing of the mind…almost. For an immediate instance, I still vividly recall struggling to memorize for a high school class assignment in my junior year Hamlet’s soliloquy. Right off the bat it was a challenge of vocabulary. What the hell’s a soliloquy? And then deeper what? Consummation, contumely, mortal coil…bare bodkin! What did it all mean? I just barely managed to string the words together to pass the memorization assignment, forget the meaning. Now the meaning is all too clear…and poignant: to go on living or not. 

Before anyone rushes to call 911, I’m not talking life or death literally here (though that day may come). I’m talking figuratively about myself in regards to the possible results of the 2022 Midterm Elections. If the election denying, pro-insurrectionist, authoritarian friendly, anti-democracy party gains control of the House of Representatives, do I want to continue to be a good citizen? To my mind being a good citizen includes staying informed and involved in the affairs of the nation. I’ve been that way as far back as I can remember, sitting as a boy next to my father in front of our grainy black and white TV watching the Army-McCarthy hearings. I’ve been an avid consumer of news and political developments ever since. It is fair to say that has been an essential part of my identity. But this looming election has me seriously considering shedding that part of my identity. Turning off the news. Going dark when it comes to the happenings in the world outside. Cocooning myself in a thoroughly comfortable bubble that my privileged life avails me. 

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of  outrageous fortune ,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;

I’ve spent an inordinate part of my life taking up arms against various seas of trouble--first as a student then as a citizen activist and a lifelong commenter on American society*. And though my opposition didn’t always “end them”, I always felt that my opposition was the right and worthy thing for me to do. There was always the belief that one good thing would lead to another…that each strong effort would inch us closer to that more perfect union. 

If this election goes as polling suggests, that belief will be dead, replaced by the belief that American democracy has been permanently broken. There will be no news worth following after that. Indeed the news of the anti-democratic vandals running wild in the halls of government will be so distressing…so depressing…that it could only hasten confronting the To be or not to be question at its literal, existential level.    

What will be the cost of ending the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks? What would be the price of walling off news of the outside world? On the most ridiculous and trivial level, the next time an SUV drives by me declaring some insider stupidity on a bumper sticker like Let’s Go Brandon, I won’t know what it means. On a more serious, consequential level, the next time a virus sweeps through the land, I will be unprepared. Worse, I’ll be vulnerable to encounters with more “informed” morons at pharmacies telling me I have to fight the virus by swallowing bleach because “The President says so.”

Going into society without some grounding in the most basic news is a bit like walking into freeway traffic with a paper bag over your head. Whatever peace of mind you may achieve by ignoring the news could very well be offset by a real threat to your life. Still, as I sit here writing this…actually thinking this through on paper…I really don’t know how I’m going to react to those election results a week from now. To be or not to be an informed, engaged citizen is the question.

* Here   Here  Here  Here....for example