It’s an election year so millions of eyes are on politics that usually couldn’t care less. Initially, this sounds amazing because running a successful democracy requires the people to actually get informed and involved. However, this election is spiraling out of control. I’m constantly seeing Facebook fights that devolve from political discussions into bashing other humans and degrading them. People are getting pepper-sprayed at rallies by other citizens. A friend of mine was nearly run off the road because of his bumper sticker. I’ve always known that politics can be poisonous, but this is actually insane. So what’s wrong with politics?
It would be silly to ignore the role that social media is playing in this election. Lies, assumptions, and hate are all perpetuated by statuses, tweets, and memes. There is a rumor going around that one of the candidates is only running because a rich man is paying him to stay in the race hoping that the two candidates in the lead won’t win the nomination. While this could be true, the only proof I’ve seen shared across social media is a single graphic saying that it’s true. Yet countless people have accepted that as truth without looking any further. That is a major danger in this election. Voters are going into the voting booth with false ideas about candidates that they believe because they saw a meme about it. That’s not okay. Social media can be a powerful tool to bring in more voters and spread the ideas of each candidate, but when people are producing posts that are solely meant to trash another candidate or spread a rumor, we have a world full of misinterpretations, hate, and deceit.
Another big problem is that our media coverage has strayed from informative to entertainment. The televised debates are like a reality show, spending the same amount of time talking about the other candidates as they spend on their timed discussions of the actual issues they would lead us against. Did you know that a long time ago one debate question could be discussed for hours? And now we give candidates thirty seconds. It’s like rapid-fire of who can get their rehearsed spiel out fast enough without getting interrupted by somebody else. Watching the debates looks more like an episode of "Big Brother" than professional politics. They throw around he-said-she-said and whine about other people getting more time than them. How productive is that really?
The final issue I want to address is also the absolute hardest to fix: the two-party system. This is a major problem for many reasons. I am well aware that this system generally creates balance in our government overall, but I want to discuss the current dangers it has on the presidential election. First, uninformed voters side with their party without knowing exactly what they stand for and they’re led to believe that they have to side a certain way on certain issues because that’s what their party stands for. These people are not looking at the pros and cons of different policies, and some aren’t even aware of what many of the issues really are. Secondly, it completely ignores potentially great candidates who are not running under one of the major parties. We put so much weight on who will represent the democrats and republicans that we don’t even care about who is representing other views. One problem with this election, in particular, is that it is a battle of extremes. So maybe somebody who is not restricted by a major party title is exactly what we need. And lastly, it fosters unnecessary hate between the parties.
This year, people are stereotyping all liberals as freeloaders and all conservatives as hateful. Human opinion is not binary in this way. Stereotypes turn us against people before we have the chance to understand them. Rather than having productive and intellectual conversations about politics, people are just bashing the opposite party. It’s so incredibly counter-productive and it turns a nation into one giant us against them battle.
