Calling someone ignorant isn’t always a slur; it can be a fact. We all have information gaps and areas of expertise.
Do you keep up with movies and musicians? Maybe you follow world news or read the latest best sellers.
Culture and news are both important, but not keeping up with what’s going on in the world of politics has consequences. Local newspapers are in short supply. Area news channels often do a better job predicting Oklahoma’s unpredictable weather than they do keeping us informed about issues that have real-world impacts on our lives.
The right to vote underpins our democracy, but it takes more than just the ability to register, go to the polls, and to know that your vote counts. We have to know who and what we’re voting for. That means we, as voters, have a duty to educate ourselves, to listen to people with whom we do and do not agree, to check facts, including those we would like to believe.
How do we do that here in rural Oklahoma where good internet connections can be hard to come by? Can you afford streaming services? What about a newspaper subscription? Where do you get your news?
If you can get online, what are your sources? How do we check influencers’ facts? Are opinions, including mine, news or just something one should think about and, hopefully, confirm? How do you confirm them?
Ignorance of the facts got us into the mess we are in now. Too many people cited the bad economy as their reason to vote for the current occupant of the White House. Maybe they thought they had no reason follow the Dow, but if they had, they would have known that U.S. stock markets were the envy of the post-Covid world.
But what about their personal finances? How can you keep up with the news when you are working two jobs and living paycheck to paycheck? Do workers know that Oklahoma is one of three states whose minimum wage is below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour? Maybe this explains why people need two jobs to get by. Have tariffs caused you to think twice about your morning coffee? Did you see tariffs coming?
Gov. Kevin Stitt delayed the vote for SQ 832 until 2026 after he was unable to stop the ballot initiative. How many know that SQ 832 seeks to raise the minimum wage in Oklahoma? How many of you were led to believe that raising the minimum wage would cost people their jobs? Studies don’t bear that out.
Here is a question for public servants in Oklahoma: How do we keep the citizens informed?
Here’s a couple for voters: How do we know that we can trust our sources? How do we access legitimate sources?
On these questions hang the fate of the citizens of this state, both those who vote and those who don’t. For everyone’s good we have to access news and facts we can trust.
Our quality of life and the state of our democracy depends on it.
