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Comment by toomanybeersies | Hacker News Reader

I recently moved countries, and in the process, sort of stopped caring or reading about politics.

The way I see it, politics back home doesn't effect me, and I can't do anything about local politics as I can't vote.

It really is liberating to not give a shit about politics, to put it bluntly. It's one less source of stress in my life.

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I felt like that when I heard the UK was going to vote on leaving the EU. I’d not followed UK news for a while and was so out of the loop that the vote was even happening surprised me.

I didn’t get round to renewing my postal vote as I thought it didn’t really effect me anymore anyway - my new life in the Netherlands was what mattered.

Then Leave won, and Brexit was going to happen. I remember waking up to the news and feeling horrified. Then in the coming days I felt a sense of shock: actually Brexit did effect me, of course. I would lose my right to work and stay freely here in the Netherlands, my home of 8 years. Where I had a family with 4 kids.

The point is I now believe every citizen should remain at least minimally informed and involved on politics “back home” and locally. I vote every chance I get now. And I still regret not voting in Brexit.

You're absolutely right. Come election time, I'll have to reacquaint myself with the politics of my home country, because I might move back there one day and don't want to find it's fallen to pieces in my absence.

I also do keep minimally informed right now, I check the news maybe once a week to see if anything major has happened back home.

I think a voting guide would be more useful in a situation like this that explains the issues at stake on the ballot. If more people used a voting guide instead of the news, I doubt Brexit would have gone through.

Yes. In the Netherlands we have “stemwijzer” even for local elections, it works fairly well.

I moved overseas. The thing is that politics back home does affect me. If they go absolutely nuts back home (US), that affects how folks approach me here. It can affect travel and all sorts of things. The tax codes affect me since they find it prudent to tax citizens regardless of where they live and work. Fortunately, taxes here are high, but if they weren't, I'd have to pay the US government. The unfortunate part of this whole thing is that I can't really influence politics back home. Technically, I can vote. But it makes me question whether or not it counts, since the form asks me if I plan on living in the states again. I don't think a senator will listen to me, especially since I'm from Indiana and therefore a tiny demographic. I certainly feel taxed without proper representation.

On the other hand, I can vote in local elections here (Norway) since I've lived here 3 years. I just can't vote in national elections (the elections switch between the two, first a national election then 2 years later, a local election. 2 years later, back to national). It benefits me to pay some attention to local politics.

Haha the same thing happened to me.

But also not having 24/7 reality TV disguised as "cable news" blaring all around me all the time helps a lot. US is anomalous in this regard.

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