Just like how sometimes I consider how little I should care about a social media frequenter’s opinions. I am, for better or for worse, getting near the last willing comment I am going to leave on this, or any, social media site.

That is not due to age or illness, it is due to enshittification. Not by the admin but by the populace.

Have you seen our district lines in this country? One of the underdiscussed problems with gerrymandering is that, in addition to being undemocratic in the obvious ways, it obscures who your representatives are -- especially if you live in a city. Take a look at the US district map around Austin. There is no "rep from Austin" just a crapshoot about which bizzarely-shaped rural district your random part of the city is attached to to nullify your vote. This is repeated all over the country to various degrees and state house districts are even smaller and often weirder.

I agree with you on governors and senators but it's very easy not to learn who your other representatives are, because it requires close attention to detailed street by street maps that change every census.

I've lived in the same district for a while, have recently called my national senators, congressional representative, and state representative, and I'm still coming up hazy. If you gave me a list that included the current ones plus a bunch of names that have never been in politics, I would definitely pick them out. But if you asked me to list them from memory, there is a good chance I'd name some of the previous office holders.

The general point being that simplistic rules can be great heuristics, but turning them into strict logical conditions is doomed to failure. Even about simple "fizzbuzz" style things.

> Feels a little disingenuous to quote this line and not the full section where OP was just asking you to know your local representatives. [...] you have to almost actively not pay attention to not know anything about yours.

Feels disingenuous to ignore the fact that what I said applies to the rest of the comment too, don't you think? If it isn't obvious: typically the first year after a move - likely more, at least until House elections - most people will have zero reason to know their representatives' names, let alone keep remembering it for years. Who ever forgets a name they learned during a campaign a couple years ago, right?

For starters, something like almost ~half of students move away from their families to attend college. And then look at moves for jobs and retirement and everything else. And then when an incumbent leaves, all of their constituents end up in a similar boat as someone who just moved. And I'm not even beginning to touch the fact that a lot of people's unawareness of politics is (spoiler, I know) due to them not having the luxury to be able to devote as much bandwidth to it as HNers do. All these people shouldn't have any political opinions whatsoever until they figure out their representatives because... some wise guy on HN thinks knowing your representative's name is a good litmus test for whether you can tell good from bad? Do you expect any other response than "screw you"?

> I've never called anyone about anything political

Quite a confession given the side you're standing on. You'd think such a model citizen would've at least cared to contact their rep one damn time to suggest something about such a serious issue. Like maybe helping educate people about the government and politics better so they become as enlightened as the others.

If you (and/or parent, whoever feels this way) genuinely want a good outcome for something so serious instead of standing on a high horse and looking down on the uneducated, maybe actually go campaign to put your lovely literacy tests in the constitution, or whatever else would advance your cause forward. If you have some integrity, perhaps also campaign to fund the education system better and make it easier for citizens to vote in the same amendment, so that you're actually helping the people you presumably care about. Until you actually do something meaningful about this, I hope you can understand that your opinions about who should have opinions really won't come across the way you'd presumably hope they do.

Well, the contention of TFA is that you will turn ideologically crazy if you have an extreme belief and only speak to average people who disagree with you.

Turning ideologically crazy sounds like something that would also happen if you only talk to people who have the same extreme beliefs.

That makes me, a conservative, wonder what those other headlines are talking about and if those headlines are worthwhile or helpful. Because, regardless of what you are reading, the fundamentals of government are unchanged. So if people aren't reading about them, that to me just suggests they're ignorant.