[metabagel]

This is close to correct. We should be aware of current events but not become too emotionally involved with them. They are mostly outside of our control, and we need to reserve most of our focus and emotional energy on what is front of us and our loved ones. However, we should still act on behalf of greater causes with the means at our disposal. Some examples...

world in crisis - I donate to World Central Kitchen

the war in Ukraine - I donate to Come Back Alive

fascism in America - I vote for and donate to the campaigns of candidates opposed to fascism

[chadcmulligan]

"We should be aware of current events" - should we? Why? There is an avalanche of current events, I've stopped paying attention and I still find out - its impossible to avoid, I see absolutely no value in paying attention to things that I'm just not interested in. War in Iran - yep, battle of the stupids - it just doesn't matter, there is nothing I can do about it, best to ignore it all. I have friends obsessed with the news, wake up in the morning and watch the news during breakfast - they discuss it endlessly, get a lot of angst from it, its all just noise to my mind.

[tlavoie]

Doing what you feel necessary or useful at a local scale is still empowering. Understanding that the effects will be mostly local as well is a good thing, but choosing your battles is perfectly healthy.

[watwut]

Cause people unaware of those events vote to cause those events.

[forthefuture]

Large groups of people all contributing small amounts towards a goal none of them could accomplish on their own is the only way any of those things ever get done.

[chadcmulligan]

Sure, but that has nothing to do with watching the news though, I would put it paying attention to the news actually takes time from things you could do.

[shreddude]

Thank you for your donations. World Central Kitchen is a really unique organization. In addition to feeding people in Ukraine, Gaza, and pretty much anywhere in the world where disaster strikes, they have a very unique model in which they employ locals and feed cash into in local businesses, generating economic impact to jumpstart the shattered economies in disaster zones. Your donations actually make a bigger difference than you might realize.

[appplication]

I was recently massively downvoted on Reddit because I mentioned I didn’t really care about candidates stances either way on Israel/Palestine as it regards to a city-level election. I certainly have opinions and understand why folks have principles either way, but we can’t make every issue the issue we spend our energy on, and this doesn’t meet the bar for me for a city official.

Sometimes online and election media discourse can feel like we’re supposed to be single issue voters on 1000 issues at once.

[ViscountPenguin]

Israel Palestine single-voterism is particularly frustrating to me because of the weird way it has to infect completely irrelevant topics. As a particularly crazy example, I remember people arguing about Israel Palestine in the context of the Australian Aboriginal Voice to Parliament debate, a debate about an internal representation mechanism for Australian Aboriginal people, incredibly few of which have any ties to either Israel or Palestine, and a group which I considerably doubt represent a single soldier on either side.

[bonesss]

That’s a feature, not a bug.

Historically that tactic is used by ‘revolutionary’ and ‘liberation’ and reactionary groups to overwhelm and exclude honest debate. It’s a destabilization technique, aimed at gathering critical mass for revolt with no clear second phase. Occupy, overthrow, liberate, replace…

Taken at face value, honest protest, it’s a hate crime against the victims and participants in the actual situation: these chaos agitators steal the cause for noise and invest in perpetual purity and polemic campaigns, it only hurts the victims, but enables eternal grievance politics for the agitators.

Spray painting Nazi slogans on American universities isn’t helping diplomacy half the world away. Flotillas without aide aren’t aide.

The propagandists involved are not dumb, they are funding very tactically. The point is not convincing or helping anyone, it’s establishing dominance and orthodoxy.

[fn-mote]

In my ideal world, explaining this stance would be a part of democracy.

It’s an uphill battle vs a tribal mentality, though.

[Spooky23]

It has nothing to do with Israel or Palestine really. That’s because many Jewish people in the US have had it hammered into their heads, usually through political messaging delivered adjacent to religious practice, that this type of activity is essential to the survival of Israel and of themselves.

It’s the same playbook successfully used with evangelical Christian groups and now even some Catholics. Latinos literally vote for people whose stated aim is to round them up. The technique is fear endorsed by a trusted leader or in a sacred place.

If the political person says the thing they are supposed to say, they’re safe. Otherwise, they want to destroy your way of life.

[qsera]

>We should be aware of current events

I have come to the conclusion that there is no way a layman understand the truth about current events. So it is best to not at all be aware of any current events as reported by the media or popular opinion.

For example you say "fascism in America", and I wonder is this guy for real? Fascism? If this was true how are all the people who insult Trump on social media still alive or not locked up?

So imagine if you were running a new outlet. All of your readers will unquestioningly accept your flawed narrative! And imagine there are multiple of such flawed/biased news outlets.

There is no way to know the truth. This is painfully clear when you read stuff in the news that you have first hand knowledge about...There is some name to the fallacy of why people still believe in news despite that...

[cocacola1]

If there’s no way to know the truth, how do you know you’ve come to the right conclusion?

[qsera]

What conclusion? I am talking about not having any conclusions at all.