Don't engage in politics.
Representative democracies follow the principle of Division of Labor. People specialize in certain areas.
In todays age, we want everything now. But as the former chancellor of Germany stated: "The normal speed of any democracy is the snail's pace." And we elect governments for a certain amount of years. During this time, they have the opportunity to change the country for the better. And if we are discontent with their result, we can vote for someone else after the legislation period ended. But similarly as you don't want your boss to constantly hover behind your back, comment on every key stroke you do, and demand an official statement for every error you make, you should cut the politicians some slack as well. Like you and me, they are just human beings, and as such deeply flawed, just like everyone else. The job of politicians is a very tough one, because you always are under the scrutiny of the public, have to deal with impertinent journalists and worse: even with other politicians. Job security is not very high, since you are only elected for the current legislation period. The
Some people argue that it was our responsibility to actively engage in politics. This is of course not the case. We are not here on earth to live up to someone else's expectations.
Some people claim it was egoistical, not to care about politics, because this would mean that you "don't care about others". This shows how emotional some people attach themselves to certain political believes, and what kind of energy you have to expect if you wer to engage in political discussions. If someone already has such strong opinions, and expects everyone to behave just as this person likes them to, you can be sure that they will not tolerate any political opinion that diverges from their own.
Furthermore, it is perfectly possible to improve the world without engaging in politics. Most people do this though their job. Construction worker ensure that families don't have to camp under the sky during winter, but can live in their cosy homes. Bankers help these families to buy their houses and apartments now, and pay them later, one installment at a time etc. Only because someone doesn't do his job for free doesn't mean that he doesn't do something good for the community. On the contrary, the payment by a private person or privately owned corporation proves the tangible value of this work. While the societal value of feministic book clubs, funded entirely by the state or mad possible by volunteers is at least questionable. And while honest trade enables the trading partners to meed on eyes level, charitable work is often chaotic, inefficient and always includes some power imbalance. These power imbalances in charity organizations have often been exploited (like in churches and socialistic welfare organizations). So honing one particular skill, and using it for the good of the community, by finding the most worthy recipient of your work through the free market is the best way to actually have a positive impact, being much more effective than complaining about the state of the world.
Media outlets and broadcasting companies require a certain amount of clicks, reads, views. This is even more true for privately owned media, that actually have to turn a profit from their products, but it is also true for state owned media that will not be able to justify spending of several billion of dollars or euros for programs that nobody watches. For this reason, sensationalist articles are produced, with topics mainly covering war, crimes, the decline of the economy, grim predictions about the near future and other fearmongering, with the occasional sexual implicit article. Articles about positive news are exceptionally rare, leading to the general feeling of decline in the population, even though in reality humanity is progressing constantly.
Many reports are utterly irrelevant, but are broadcasted to gain the attention of the viewer. Reports about some royals, or about sports lack any importance.
If news organizations are owned by the state, it is unreasonable to assume that they could report freely and impartially. Even though sometimes plainly false facts will be shown, most censorship will be performed by omission.
The media can not report on everything that happens in the world, so it has to pick a few of the news and present them. In this process, influencing of the viewer could be either intentional or unintentional. The fact is, that through the news you only see what the news outlet wants you to see of the world. It is not the real world, but the world they present to you.
Some people resort to using different news outlets, some news from the left and some news from the right, to get a broader coverage. But then you still see only a distorted picture. The one is distorted by the left, and the other by the right. With both sides trying to rope you in as soldier for their cause and their interests. You will still not be able to tell what really is the case. And how much time do you really have to ready every news article multiple times, written by different news outlets?
A straw man argument is when someone takes the weakest point from the others argument, knows it down and calls it a win. The media often does this with people, by taking the most controversial and unappealing politicians of the "other side" and basically give you cartoon versions of them. They might think that this is the most relevant information, or they might just want to influence you. Watching different news outlets will not help much in getting a better picture in this case, because you basically only get to see left wing cartoons and right wing cartoons, and will come to the conclusion that politics is a giant circus, politicians are clowns and we are doomed by having such incompetent leaders.
The solution is easy: Observe in your own daily life how the world is. Don't let anyone tell you that it is this way or that way. You can see the world how it is. Do you and your friends still get doctors appointments? Then the health care system might not have collapsed yet.
Most topics are irrelevant. Relevant topics are repeated many times, but without additional information. The viewer doesn't learn something new if he reads yet another article over the wars that are raging for several years now.
In academia, we are careful to focus on the facts and clearly mark opinions as they are. We call our opinions hypothesis. This phrasing clearly shows that we don't know what the reality is, and we can not prove or disprove it by facts yet. But we often have a plan to find out more about the subject through experiments.
In the news, most facts don't change. Russia and Ukraine are at war with each other, Israel and Palestine are at war with each other, Covid rages or whatever major event currently happens in the world. The news around this are often not about the facts, but about opinions on how the future will be (as if anyone could predict this).
So the news are used to form opinions about who is at fault, who will win the war, who will win the election, when will Covid end etc. Things that nobody can predict. Minor advancements during the war in either position doesn't tell much about who will eventually win. It's just all about opinions.
And you don't need opinions if you don't need to act. If you need to act, you need to use the facts and form an opinion on how to move on. This is of course true. But if you don't plan to act on something, then you don't need an opinion. On the contrary, people that have an opinion are often very inert to changing said opinion again. They will readily use any fact that validates their opinion to prove that they are right, but dismiss any fact that hints that their opinion is incorrect. Because people emotionally attach themselves to their opinion. They feel like, if their opinion was wrong, then they as a person were wrong. So whenever they hear someone argue against their opinion, they feel personally attacked.
So when you have an opinion, you are basically not open to more information and insight about this topic any more. Whereas when you have an hypothesis, you acknowledge that you are missing facts and still have to investigate further.
Often, news about mass layoffs are circulated through the media. But mass hirings and mass layoffs are normal for fast growing tech companies, especially in silicon valley. It is unnatural there for developers to stay in the same company for a decade. And it is also kind of desired from tech firms to stir the pot from time to time, getting new, fresh engineers with fresh ideas. Because sitting in the same spot for centuries makes people inert to change. They just continue on the same path that has always worked, until it doesn't work any longer. This is similar to government agencies, where whole divisions end up doing bullshit jobs. In government agencies, people are often difficult to lay off, and the clerks also don't work towards their own replacement.
Even though many layoffs might be the result of previous over hiring during the phases of huge growth, they are also healthy for companies to not rust into old behaviors.
On the other hand, losing people with decades of domain and code base knowledge is also a real risk, that might harm companies in the short run.
In football, we could just read the summary at the end of the season. Look at the tables who played vs whom, and who won. This would give us all information there is. Maybe also look at the tables who scored the goals. But many people still feel like they rather watch the games themselves. To see all 90 minutes of soccer playing out. If we just used two hours to memorize the result of the world cup, and the names of the players, their positions and the number of goals they scored, we were more knowledgeable about football than literally any person that watched games of the world cup, and still invested less time. But of course, nobody would actually do that, because why would you learn all those names and results, if you didn't even care enough about football to watch a single game?
In politics and the news it is similar. We don't need to watch the whole game. It is perfectly sufficient to look at the results. During a crisis, nobody knows when it will end, and how. Everyone just stares at the screen, watches the news and tries to predict something. So why don't you just do something meaningful with your time, and look the result up in Wikipedia in a few years from now?
So in a conversation about political subjects, you have to ask yourself two things.
Often, this is not the case. In many cases, there is absolutely nothing to be gained from political conversations, because both parties have rejected the opinion of the other party long ago. Furthermore, the exchanged arguments are always the same. They didn't change much in the past 100 years (more welfare state vs less welfare state, open borders vs closed borders, supporting wars vs anti war movement, environment protection, affirmative actions for minorities etc. have always been the political topics) and they effective boil down to personal prioritization between freedom, security, privacy, equality of opportunity, equality of outcome, personal wellbeing. So just parroting the arguments over and over again is just tiresome, but definitely not productive. Some people just have different priorities. It is impossible to convince them with facts that A is more important than B, because it is just personal preference. Maybe these persons are willing to completely forfeit A, just as long as they get B. And you might be the total opposite and say: "But if we could just have A, we wouldn't need B any more, can't you see that?" But no, they can't. They just have a different personality. This can only be resolved by voting. And people might change their preferences over time, when they see that one of these goods is fulfilled, but another isn't, they might change their voting behavior, so different parties get to lead the government. There is nothing to discuss there!