To those who look at the politics of the United States with a cynical perspective, there is never any end to the criticisms that you can find. I’ve never been one for politics, and that’s more because I have problems with those who get involved, their methods of running and what they do in office, rather than because of the system itself.
Political misdirection itself can mean many things, from what a candidate is telling supporters about his or her background, to what candidates or politicians already in office are arguing/talking about so that issues that they don’t know how to solve or don’t want to talk about aren’t brought up. The latter form of misdirection is the one that I’ll mostly be talking about in this article.
For example, one such issue that I don’t see talked about often is how many people are impoverished and going hungry in the U.S. To give you an idea how much of a problem it is, Poverty and Hunger in America states that in a 2014 government study, 46.7 million people -- or 15 percent of the U.S. population -- were living in poverty. Of that 46.7 million, 15.5 million of them were children under the age of 18. Lastly, the study showed that 48.1 million Americans lived in “food-insecure” households, which included 15 million children.
Another example, which exists in almost every town in America, is in the educational system. According to dosomething.org, each year, over 1.2 million students drop out of high school, which is about 7,000 students a day -- meaning that 25% of high school freshmen fail to graduate on time. I don’t see why something like this isn’t talked about. I remember watching Bill Nye in a "Big Think" video explaining how children are the future, and that in order to maintain our country, we need people to be educated and competent enough to understand the issues that plague us, come up with solutions and run for office.
I’m a bit disappointed that there is always so much coverage about issues like where certain people are able to go to the bathroom and civil rights, which I don’t think are very difficult to solve. I know that they matter, and I know that they may be controversial, but I’m a firm believer that the media has an agenda that follows those of politicians. I don’t want to sound like I don’t care about these problems, or suggest that they aren’t problems to begin with, because that’s not true -- they are. But the fact of the matter is, there are other issues in the world and in our backyards that need to be addressed by those who are supposed to be running our country and trying to fix the problems with it.
Going back to what I said at the beginning, if politicians and news companies are in cahoots, then a politician, regardless of whether or not he or she is in office or running, doesn’t need to address issues like this that are really a problem. Additionally, I don’t want to sound like no politician does anything to help with problems like this – some do – but how and why can such a large issue like poverty not be an issue in the presidential election?
