OPINION:
At least officially, the presidential election of 2020 had the highest rate of turnout (of voting-age population) since the 1968 presidential election. In between those two elections, there were elections in which no one seemed really all that interested.
In 1996, for example, less than half the voting-age population even bothered to vote. For much of the past 100 years, despite the hectoring of the good government crowd, the percentage of the voting-age population that has voted in presidential elections has hovered around 50%.
So, about half the people who could vote in presidential elections in the last century decided, for whatever reasons, that they really didn’t have an opinion — at least not one worth sharing — about who should rule them.
More recently, millions of people, perhaps as many as 50 million in the United States, have bought an album or song by Taylor Swift. The good news is that means that about 300 million Americans have not purchased an album or song from Ms. Swift. To put it another way, about 85% of us do not have a strong enough opinion about Ms. Swift’s music to want to purchase it.
How about opinions on something more important? In 2017, Gallup asked a few survey questions about the existence of God. About two-thirds (64%) of American adults expressed certainty about the existence of God. Others (21%) thought God probably exists but they have doubts, while a much smaller proportion think God probably doesn’t exist (6%) or are certain that God doesn’t exist (7%).
In other words, even when it comes to the really important questions, more than a quarter of Americans don’t seem to have really firm opinions.
Is it a bad thing to not have an opinion about political candidates, the most popular singer at the moment or God? Absolutely not. Rather, it is an affirmative good.
One of the wonderful things about the United States and its generally laissez-faire attitude is that here, it is OK to just not care about something or someone. We are (mercifully) not required to have an opinion on everything. We are free to ignore all sorts of things without any social sanction or unnecessary anxiety, except for dealing with the do-gooders and busybodies demanding to know whether we’ve voted or given blood or read books or used sunscreen or whatever.
That freedom — to be able to not have an opinion about everything — is an essential shock absorber in a free society. The people who don’t care about elections or sports or movies or whatever it is you care about help ensure that we don’t kill one another in the streets over trivialities such as which party’s turn it is to rule us.
Be deeply skeptical of those who have opinions about everything. It suggests a mind incapable of delineating between the important and the trivial, between the essential and the frivolous, between the enduring and the ephemeral. Not everything nor everyone is worthy of your time, attention and thoughts.
In the absence of a meaningful preference, silence is usually acceptable and almost always the wisest course.
Free your mind, be calm, have fewer opinions.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times. He offers his opinions, informed and otherwise, twice a week on these pages.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.