Someone's Gotta Give

As I was cruising the internet yesterday, mainly youtube with my friend, Omar, we stumbled across The Onion's video page. As a humongous fan of The Onion, I was ecstatic. (For those of you who don't know what The Onion is, it is a satirical newspaper that makes me laugh so hard, I cry while reading it.) Anyway, on their page, they have fake news clips from relevant stories, poking fun at politics, celebrity icons, etc. Due to its intriguing title, we clicked on a video that read, "Pretend you give a [insert vulgar word here] about politics." (You can watch this video here. It's completely school-appropriate, don't worry. It's only the title that may imply it's not).

Anyway, After about five seconds, we were in hysterics. The premises includes a news team that is just tired of hearing about the upcoming election, so they have a guest speaker appear that talks about ways in which you can appear knowledgeable about the current issues and candidates.
The video goes on for about three minutes on how to make excuses to not talk about politics and expressing non-opinions. After losing my breath in laughter, I realized something: There are actually people in the world who do this. My most favorite line in the video comes from the "expert" speaking: "Here's another great thing to do: talk about how sad it is that some people don't get involved in politics. Blaming others for being uninformed is a great way to seem informed yourself!" This line put the icing on the cake. I think that almost EVERY student on the planet who is involved in politics one way or another is guilty of doing this [myself included]. At New Trier, and within classes I take, I hear political discussions all over the map in terms of knowledge. I hear clearly stated political arguments with evidence to back up the point, and I very frequently hear arguments that go a little somethin' like this:
"Barack Obama is a bad candidate. I like McCain. He's a ... maverick"
"But... Barack Obama likes ... change. McCain doesn't."
I feel like there should be a happy medium that everyone strives for. In hearing informed arguments (although there are VERY few that I hear) and hearing the sortof bare minimum isortapayattentiontocurrentevents types as shown above, I can't really tell how my generation is going to end up in the later years. Does this difference in terms of knowing about current events exist forever? I'm not sure, but in no way am I saying that I know everything about politics and the upcoming election. I try my best to keep up. I don't know everything about each candidate or their track record, and when I can't watch a speech or debate, I don't punish myself (too much). I hate to say this and sound elitist, but I wish everyone would at least try to keep up... just a little... maybe I'm overreacting and everyone's too busy to pay attention or just doesn't give a [vulgar word here as the onion stated].
So let's do the bare minimum and maybe turn on the news once in a while. It's really important for people our age to know what's going on outside of our own lives. What would happen to the world if everyone just cared about things that happened to themselves? Where would we be as a planet? Think about it.