It sucks to be a forgetful citizen

Here I am, “citizen”, the person that’s supposed to keep the government in check.

But I am so forgetful. If a politician does something stupid and it’ shown on TV - and they do so many stupid things - there’s so much things to remember. So much, that the next day I unconciously forget about the whole thing.

My own forgetfulness was painful to me especially during the two govt. terms before 2023 in Poland. I know for a fact that there were criminal things happening. Just that … I can’t list them - I don’t remember them anymore. But they certainly deserved to be remembered, especially by a good citizen.

Sometimes I think about what I’d say if a reported asked me on the street what I think about a recent happening. I worry that I won’t be able to answer in a way that’s expected from an informed citizen. Not because I’d lived under a rock and hadn’t heard about the event, but because “seeing it on TV” gave me a false sense of being informed. I could go in confidently, remembering seeing it on TV, but ending up not having a very deep opinion.

I wonder if it’d be good to trade being “up to date” (forgetfully) for reading non-fiction books about not-so-recent-events-but-long-ago-enough-that-theres-a-book-out. Books take more time to consume, so they leave a deeper mark in your head. A TV news reel is fleeting - you watch it for 3 minutes and never again.