Posted on 03/12/2018 8:38:11 AM PDT by re_tail20
At first, the experiment didn’t have a name.
Right after the election, Erik Hagerman decided he’d take a break from reading about the hoopla of politics.
Donald Trump’s victory shook him. Badly. And so Mr. Hagerman developed his own eccentric experiment, one that was part silent protest, part coping mechanism, part extreme self-care plan.
He swore that he would avoid learning about anything that happened to America after Nov. 8, 2016.
“It was draconian and complete,” he said. “It’s not like I wanted to just steer away from Trump or shift the conversation. It was like I was a vampire and any photon of Trump would turn me to dust.”
It was just going to be for a few days. But he is now more than a year into knowing almost nothing about American politics. He has managed to become shockingly uninformed during one of the most eventful chapters in modern American history. He is as ignorant as a contemporary citizen could ever hope to be.
James Comey. Russia. Robert Mueller. Las Vegas. The travel ban. “Alternative facts.” Pussy hats. Scaramucci. Parkland. Big nuclear buttons. Roy Moore.
He knows none of it. To Mr. Hagerman, life is a spoiler.
“I just look at the weather,” said Mr. Hagerman, 53, who lives alone on a pig farm in southeastern Ohio. “But it’s only so diverting.”
He says he has gotten used to a feeling that he hasn’t experienced in a long time. “I am bored,” he said. “But it’s not bugging me.”
It takes meticulous planning to find boredom. Mr. Hagerman commits as hard as a method actor, and his self-imposed regimen — white-noise tapes at the coffee shop, awkward scolding of friends, a ban on social media — has reshaped much of his life.
Extreme as it is, it’s a...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Typical LIB lunatic. Often referred to as “whack-job”.
The NYT can’t even find Ohio on the map and they find some obscure pig farmer to interview....?
Yea sure...another DNC plant masked as a normal middle American.
This guy is an extreme, but there is something to be said for taking a break from politics every once in a while. Most political shows, newspapers and websites are designed to draw attention by making readers angry. A steady diet of that can warp anyone’s perspective. Its good to de-toxify every once in a while.
I wonder if he is going to read the New York Times article about him...
Seriously, though, if he was truly devoted to staying away from the news, he would not have consented to being interviewed by a news organization, even an ostensible one.
This guy definitely makes the needle move on my “Attention-Whore” Detector.
Yep. It keeps you sane. I’d actually like to do what this guy is doing. I’ve partially done it every now and then, but not this extreme.
Getting rid of TV in 1997 was a huge positive for me, because it got me away from the MSM. I have to confess it will be interesting to see this guy’s read on everything that happened while he was “away” when he comes back.
True story: the daughter (42 years old) of someone I work with has been struggling with severe depression since and “due to” the election of POTUS Trump, and is now in psychotherapy for her problems in coping......
I would guess that there are a lot more in similar condition (considering the whole snowflake syndrome), than for those who were not supportive of 0bama, for example.
I agree.
In a better world nearly all of us would be able to live our daily lives with only a smattering of knowledge about what is going on in government.
Not that big a deal, really. In order to be a liberal you have to quarantine yourself from truth, facts and reality. All he’s doing is stretching it to cover all media.
I saw a bumper sticker on a huge, new SUV. “I put up with Obama. You can put up with Trump.”
So...he works for CNN?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.