For too long, we’ve couched political disengagement in negative moral terms. The shirkers, the reluctant, are portrayed as the ones who don’t “care enough”: They didn’t get off their butts; they wouldn’t step away from their own parochial concerns to take on the fate of the whole.

But maybe they care too much. Politics for the sake of politics is soul crushing. No matter how you ingest it — old media, new media, even on Comedy Central — it’s constricting and constraining, as if you’re being forced to comprehend America solely through Internet comment boards or “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.”

Disengagement is not a permanent solution. How long can a democracy survive if we turn away? But like a baseball fan betrayed by the steroid scandal, it’s going to be awhile before I can reengage with what was once my favorite sport.