Become Informed — Then Vote
The first part of the above headline is not heard nearly so often as the second part. At first thought, this might seem strange. After all, the same media echo chamber that chants “Vote, vote, vote!” would never implore young people to start driving a car without also emphasizing the importance of learning how to drive safely before ever getting behind the wheel and taking off on their own. Why should voting be taken any less seriously — particularly considering that voting the wrong candidates into positions of political power could ultimately end up being much more dangerous to innocent people than reckless driving?
Upon further reflection, however, it does make sense for the media echo chamber to encourage people to vote without also emphasizing the importance of becoming well-informed — if the intent is to beguile people into voting for the echo chamber’s favored candidates. Uninformed or misinformed voters are easily beguiled. And it is not just the media that do the beguiling, but also the political demagogues who feign to be the voice of the people while intending to amass power for themselves if given the opportunity.
This is not mere conjecture or theory, but has been proven time and again in the laboratory of history. The German people voted Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party (aka the Nazi Party) into power hoping to improve their lives — they instead got tyranny and the Holocaust. If the German people had been much better informed, history would have turned out to be very different.
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