This election feels like a joke. Growing up my father had always been involved in politics and I have been surrounded by it for as long as I could remember. I used to shun politics once I was old enough to have a say in dinner table discussions. I did not want to talk about politics or hear about politics; I did not want a damn thing to do with politics. There was not one bone in my body that cared.
In junior year of high school I ended up enrolled in AP government and politics. And, despite my best efforts to sleep through the majority of the class, a great deal of information got through. It was in that fall that President Obama was running for his second term against Mitt Romney. In between resting my eyes in class and creating endless doodles in my notebook, we discussed the Electoral College and political campaigns. None of us could vote at the time, it was still a foreign but exciting concept. In some ways, voting still is for me. I have only voted at this point in time in one other election and it was at the local level. Until mailing in my absentee ballot I had never cast my vote in a national election.
This election still does not feel real to me at times. The larger than life candidates, the polarized groups attacking each other for each and every move appears to belong more on a reality television show than a presidential debate. If someone had told me this would be my first presidential election, I would have laughed.
People write that they are not shocked by our political climate; I find that interesting although still being new to it all has maybe left me a bit naïve. On one hand we have a candidate flouting every form of civility in his campaign and on the other a candidate virulently hated by many for reasons I wasn’t even alive for. This is what you would find in a comic book or a satirical movie. This election is not the election we need, but it is to many the election we deserve.
Part of myself wishes I still didn’t care. If I didn’t care I could maybe, somehow, block out the current discourse, and pretend that this was just like any other election my father talked about at the dinner table. Part of me wishes for the contest between Romney and Obama again. Though it had its own share of cruelties (here’s looking at you birther’s and 47%-ers). It was not this. There are not enough words in the English language to even explain what this is.
For this to be my – and many other young adults – first presidential election to vote in is beyond fathomable. For so long we were under the impression that the presidential election was between two candidates who did not hate the other, who did not slander the other. The behavior has been unacceptable, both from the campaigns and their supporters. This is not to say that you shouldn’t vote, heavens no. Please, please, vote. But remember, as the next election season roles around, we do not have to make the horrors and pettiness of this cycle normality. So please, vote, do your civic duty and use your say in the future of this country. And remember, while this may have been our first election it will not the only election and we don’t have to take this.
