Turning Off, Tuning Out

MANY YEARS AGO an abrasive lady on "America Online" (remember that?) said that she was done. Done watching the news, done paying attention to current events. Without say so to her, I wondered how she intended to be well or even poorly informed, and why she would want to be that way. If she is still so inclined, by now she has missed a quarter century of modern history,and is arguably better off, and arguably not. The country certainly isn't. A pervasively uniformed citizenry is vulnerable to corrupt, self serving leadership. As Jefferson said: "If the people become inattentive to the affairs of government, the legislators and magistrates shall divide society into two classes, wolves, and sheep." No matter how redundantly often I make this point, no matter how often I quote Jefferson, it adheres. In a supposedly self governing democracy, it is our responsibility to govern. And then yeserday, as we await the impending release of the so called "Epstein files", another formerly attentive citizen,the director of our senior center, told me that she had had enough, enough vicarious misery,and was opting out. I told her that I understand completely, which I do. Things have gotten so bad, politically, morally, economically, and in all manner of other ways, that escape has become a viable alternative. My sister, a retired government employee who served as a personell manager at the Pentagon, takes same approach. Ignrance and apathy. She doesn't know, and she doesn't care. Considering that when the airplane crashed into her side of the Pentagon in 2001, you can almost give her a free pass. When I finally managed to reach her by telephone two days after the horrible event, and ask her how she was holding up, she told me that she was doing well enough, but that she wished that people would stop tring to kill her. Perfectly reasonable, I thought.She just wanted to get the hell out of there, and not look back, which she never has. And yet, her obligation, (and indeed it is an obligation), to particiapte in her own self governance remains, unabridged. I asked her who she intends to help govern on her behalf, in her stead, and she said that she didn't know and didn't care. And I'm "fine" with that, as we say. I'll pick up the slack, and keep it in the family. She is not a Trump supporter, and that's good enough for me. She used to drive an hour a day after work commuting from Washington D.C to Fredricksburg, Virginia, and upon arriving feed her cats (as all cat caregivers know, that must come first), and then proceed to catch up on "Days of Our Lives" I think it was, which her pre set VCR (remember those?) had waiting for her. Each day she erased the previous day's episode, and set the device to record anew.I found hope in the fact that she didn't preserve for eternity and posterity each day's episode; if nothing else, she was willing to move on, content to allow teh previous day's adventures and drama of fLuke and Laura fade into memory. As far as I know, those two are still mainstays, with Susan Lucci. Or maybe I've fallen behind. Luke and Laura must be in assisted living by now, probably melodramatic as ever. Sis and I are now both in our seventies, and we both hope to avoid assisted living. Its hard to imagine how, other than dying.My childhood sopa opera choice was "Love Is A Many Splendored Thing". Our father, a disabled retired attoreny, kept a daily journal of all the "action", which he read to us after school every day, except on weekends. Maybe I should offer the same service to our senior center director. After all,somebody has to keep the uninformed informed.Somebody has to govern he country, the grandest soap opera of all. It might as well be me.