So it turns out that the Information Age isn’t quite the golden age of human advancement. I honestly believed it would be because why have realistic expectations when you can run headlong into the arms of a fantasy of global peace and prosperity? Reality hit extremely hard this week.

It all started with taking a break from Big Media. It is good to be informed, sure, but somehow the formulaic approach of Big Media can get tiresomely predictable and there are almost never any uplifting stories.

So I have been spending time online with alternative channels of information. Also, it is necessary for a flaming social liberal to spend time with content that doesn’t even pretend not to have a similar “bias.” It’s not like there is a shortage of conservatism in Tanzania, especially this year as authoritarianism looms over us like the shadow of the moon obscuring the sun...

Anyway. Lots of fascinating offbeat documentaries, creative investigative pieces and excellent comedy shows. Then I decided to check in on the Trump Phenomenon as reported by anything other than the formal media. Unfortunately, this exposed me to a piece of journalism where Trump supporters were extensively asked their opinions on what they thought about Trump’s policies.

Now, to be very clear: It is entirely possible that Trump himself doesn’t actually know what Trump’s policies are. It is why the media can’t leave him alone; he is the golden toupee that lays the golden headlines every day.

But I figured that Trump supporters had their reasons for the choice they made. Retrograde political views are views, however abhorrent, and people usually have some kind of logic supporting their choices, don’t they? Don’t they?

So I looked forward to hearing some vaguely linear explanations of why black people are lazy and Mexicans are thieves and women cannot be leaders and when America was great so that there was a reference point to measure how Trump could get America back to that state again.

Intellectual massacre. Some content should come with a warning: This is going to be bad for your health. I demand that we label any interviews that contain extreme vacuity so that folks who just want to retain some faith in humanity can know to move along and have a nice day.

Of course, the pieces I watched were cherry-picked for entertainment value, so I can maintain my belief that not all Trump supporters are vacant in the cranium. But. These Trump followers scared me straight.

They scared me because it wasn’t far at all from what I have observed in my own society since 2014 kicked off the big build-up to the 2015 elections. Here is the thing: We assume that in elections people will make as informed a choice as they can about whom they want to manage the political collective. So we attend the rallies and have the debates and, well, these are all exercises in reason. At least they were until weird language started to creep into the situation.

From choosing parties according to policy and presidential candidates according to how competent we imagined they might be at the nearly impossible job of head of state... We were suddenly looking for a saviour.

In 2015. Smack dab in the middle of the Age of Information when there is almost limitless access to any number of resources about human history that shows how crazy this notion is.

Like, there is literally no such thing as a one-man miracle solution to a country’s complex problems: It is always a gamble, you can assume that any incumbent will make horrendous mistakes but the hope remains that if we’re lucky then this person will choose a good team and have intensely excellent managerial skills. But nope. We looked for a one-man miracle and we sure got ourselves one.

In conclusion, there may be no correlation between knowledge and rational decision-making when it comes to politics. In fact, perhaps rationality itself is a questionable notion. We make such a fuss about being intelligent creatures but we continue to seek magical solutions, to believe in the fairytale version of life...

Wait a second. This seems like familiar territory. Why have realistic expectations when you can run headlong into the arms of a fantasy of global peace and prosperity? Huh.

Elsie Eyakuze is a blogger for The Mikocheni Report, http://mikochenireport.blogspot.com. E-mail: [email protected]