“If I Close My Eyes And Ignore the Bad News, It Still Won’t Affect Me”
By 
Why so glum, chum? Don’t worry, be happy!
Sick of the safaris in which reporters find some white men in rural diners and discover that they still support Trump? You may find there’s something even worse! TL; DR:
You’re not gonna believe it but the Times found the most insufferable dipshit possible to profile. https://t.co/zCNNjkOoe3
— Drew Magary (@drewmagary) March 10, 2018
It’s really this bad:
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.
[…]
The new administration compelled her to engage more deeply in politics, not less. She had only recently become a United States citizen, and she was passionate about the immigration debate. She did not let Mr. Hagerman opt out easily. “I was needling him,” she said.
And in response, she received, for the first time, a stern text message. “I’m now officially cross with you,” he wrote. “As you know very well I don’t wish to hear about current events. I know you don’t agree with my wishes but I do expect you to respect them.”
Hmm, that point about how his friend had reasons not to live in blissful ignorance of politics in 2018 is interesting! I wonder how Mr. Hagerman is situated socioeconomically?
This life is still fairly new. Just a few years ago, he was a corporate executive at Nike (senior director of global digital commerce was his official, unwieldy title) working with teams of engineers to streamline the online shopping experience. Before that, he had worked digital jobs at Walmart and Disney.
“I worked 12-, 14-hour days,” he said. “The calendar completely booked.”
But three years ago, he decided he had saved enough money to move to a farm, make elliptical sculptures — and, eventually, opt out of the national conversation entirely.
He lives alone and has never been married. As for money, a financial adviser in San Francisco manages his investments. Mr. Hagerman says he throws away the quarterly updates without reviewing them.
[…]
Last winter, Mr. Hagerman spent several weeks visiting his twin brother, a tech C.E.O., in San Francisco. Strict arrangements had to be made — the Sunday newspaper kept out of sight, the TV switched off, his teenage niece and nephew under special instructions.
I know “privilege” is an overused word, but there’s no other way of describing this. It’s a hell of a lot easier not to care what Trump and the Ryan and McConnell families are doing when the only consequences for you are that the numbers in the financial statements you throw away will get bigger. That he was the choice for a lengthy, uncritical profile tells you a lot.