I would guess that people know that the government has now officially shut down, an awareness mostly fueled by the attendant onslaught of media coverage, countdown clocks, and the like.
But I also have to wonder if it's something bigger than that.
You see, another thing is happening tomorrow that you might not know about. Well, you probably do; I like to think of my friends as better-informed than the average citizen.
But if statistics are to be believed, sizable majorities of you don't know that Obamacare goes into effect today. The statistics from this particular poll are arresting to say the least:
• Only 15% of those surveyed were actually aware of the October 1, 2013 start date. Another 20% gave the pollers incorrect dates, whereas a full 64% didn't know the answer at all.
• A majority of those surveyed were under the impression that the Affordable Care Act included the oft-mentioned "public option," which the reasonably cognizant person will recall died in Congress 3-1/2 years ago.
• More than 40% of respondents think that so-called "death panels" are a thing (they aren't), Medicare benefits have been cut (they haven't), and that illegal immigrants are covered under the Act (they aren't).
We can argue to no end about the ACA's merits. But this poll has nothing to do with policy merits. It has to do with clear, unassailable facts about a significant piece of legislation.
We can all agree that Congress is inept. It is. Disturbingly inept. There is no excuse for the legislature of a first-world country to act the way it does.
Let's ignore that though. Regardless of how dysfunctional our government is, there is similarly no excuse for democratic citizens to be so mind-numbingly ill-informed, for fifty percent of voters to believe straight-up falsehoods, for 85% of the voting public to be unaware that one of the biggest laws in the last decade is going into effect.
We can blame politicians for our problems, and we can blame the media for misinforming us about those problems. Surely they're both at fault.
But no matter how much I rail against Congress and CNN, I have to wonder how people don't know such basic things. I have to fear for a democracy whose citizens consistently say they disapprove of Obamacare but approve of pretty much all its major components. Who can't identify the Speaker of the House or Chief Justice.
Is this not the Information Age all of us '90s kids were told to fervently anticipate? Of 24-hour news coverage? Of round-the-clock Internet reporting? Of instantly accessible information on essentially everything?
I expect most of these people would say something like "Oh, I'm just not a political person," or "Oh, I just get so frustrated with it all," or "They're all incompetent, I just don't care."
Like I said, most people are probably aware of the government shutdown by now, but I wonder if that's part of our own excuse apparatus. We are aware of this because it reinforces our cynical belief that politics are broken, that there's nothing we can do about it, and that we can continue not paying attention.
None of these are excuses. If we believe ourselves to be a genuine democracy, you are by definition a political person. You don't get to hate politics. By holding citizenship in this country, you are a political actor, an agent of change. And one of the duties of being a political actor is being informed on current events, or at the very least being aware of how your government works.
On this our country has failed, and it's not the fault of the politicians, not the fault of the news media. The only people we can blame are ourselves. You don't have to be out canvassing every day to be a responsible citizen. But if we are to justify ourselves as a political system, to silence the critics of democracy who say that the masses are too stupid or detached to deserve political involvement, it'd be useful if we weren't proving them right.
