It seems she is not even paying attention to things that do immediately affect her. Seems like she's not even paying attention to her own needs, so how is she going to pay attention to the world?

We are in despair over her. But, she's still not alone in her disregard for just about everything. It's more common than any of us realize, I think.

He worked in a furniture store.
He sold us our couches.

He and his family only watched movies on their TV and no news or current events.

There was a curious happiness about him.

However, bad news still happens, and strikes the unprepared, too.

Someone asked how to get non-voters to vote. In many cases, it is impossible to accomplish. It's a one-on-one thing. You have to know whether what you're trying to do is even possible, or you'll waste your time on people like I described.

I could tell there was no way this guy would vote.

This was a spiritual choice I believe he made.
I've never met anyone like this before who lived in modern society rather than a temple, church, or ashram yet was purposefully avoiding negativity.

Want to rely on them.

to tell them what's going on in the world. I do it but it drives me nuts.

That there are untold millions of Americans who could have been the source material for one of Paul Manafort's coats.

I know a few of them myself, absolutely disconnected from the news of the day, blissfully unaware.

Some of them cast votes, though.

After 9/11, my sister became an avid Fox News watcher. She had it on all day long. In her case, she would have been better off being a "news avoider". Uninformed might be better than misinformed in many cases.

Somewhere, there is a balance between taking in information and thinking about that information wisely.

I'm afraid that too few people are capable of that.

we've lost that balance. Perhaps when people stopped getting their news from their local newspapers? I remember a time when my sister read the newspaper everyday, pretty much like my parents did. Then they watched the evening news. News wasn't entertainment back then, it was just news.

He had no idea 9/11 happened until 2 weeks later. Apparently, he was just working on his farm of about 3k acres, not watching tv, going to town or even listening to the radio during that time. His case may be more unique than others, but is it absolutely believable that there are a lot of people who have no clue what is going on in the country and world.

Democracy requires an informed electorate, but the information age is upon us.

Easy to binge-watch Netflix. Not so easy to keep track of what congress-critters are doing every day. Not so easy to be well informed rather than mis-informed by entertaining "pseudo-news" (comedy, conspiracy, podcasts, twitter, etc.).

Political and media systems work together to exclude or exploit casual "non-interested" citizens.

It's kind of depressing and sad to see so many lives wasted, so many possibilities denied. Think I'll go listen to "Nowhere Man", and then send some money to Beto.