Info.

I actively avoided listening to any presidential election coverage until the primary season began. 

Politics in the abstract is a fascinating arena for considering morality, ethics, the relationship between the individual and the society, and the human condition.  Politics in the concrete makes me feel irritable and cynical.  I have many things and people who are dear to me to occupy my time.  At this point in my life I am not an opinion-maker.  I’m not a political blogger. It’s simply not worth it to me to spend time or brain cells deciphering the yammering of candidates of any stripe until the field has narrowed.  Even when I do start paying attention, I can’t help filtering everything they say through a focus-group sieve:  "He phrased that statement in that way because his handlers know that he has to connect his image to the image of such-and-such." 

I don’t watch TV and I get most of my information online, which means that I am my own information gatekeeper.  I have not seen a single political ad. 

I take that back.  I did click a link that took me to the Hillary Clinton one ("Merry Christmas, I took your credit card and bought you some gifts").  I didn’t mean to watch it.  It was an accident.  I have helpfully omitted linking to it so that the same thing won’t happen to you.

Anyway, Mark and I decided that one or both of us will go to one or both of the parties’ caucuses this year.  (Why "one or both?"  Because I refuse to disenfranchise our nation’s babysitters.)  To our surprise, we discovered that this year Minnesota’s caucus is on Super Tuesday.  We’ve voted in primaries before, but neither of us has ever attended a caucus.  So we don’t exactly know what we’re doing. 

You’d think that the state political party websites would contain easy-to-find helpful information thoroughly explaining the process and telling you where to show up in order to make your voice heard.     I was all set to write "You’d be wrong," but now I have to write something different, at least halfway.  The Minnesota DFL didn’t have any information three days ago that I could find.  It does now.   Good for them.   The Minnesota Republican website told me what building we’re supposed to show up at, but doesn’t appear to cover what we should expect when we get to the caucus, if we decide to vote in the Republican one (I don’t know what it’s like elsewhere, but here you can decide at the very last minute which caucus to attend). 

This annoys me.  I have come to have an attitude of information entitlement.  Everything I want to know should be available for free on the internet.  Maybe they’re too busy trying to plan the convention.  Fortunately I have a friend who’s active in the Ron Paul campaign — she can probably explain it to me.  Hope they don’t mind if I show up with three kids.

UPDATE FOR MINNESOTANS:  Commenters Derek and Greg suggest some links to information about Minnesota’s caucus here, here, and here.