What a spectacle this election has been. Never before has such a decision seen such clownish characters, empty insults, controversy and insane media coverage. It's as if Americans were living in a two-year long reality show episode, but that's no surprise given that we crave that trash. Could our love for reality television stars, have helped fuel the fire that has come out of this election? Could our pleasure in celebrity roasts be cause for an election where digging up past dirt has become almost the entire focus, rather than the platforms?
The press loves controversy, that's a well-known fact. Since these controversial stars came onto the scene, all press coverage has come onto them. Media loves to get the people excited about what shocking action they'll do next. And we're like sheep, eager to follow and disinterested in learning any better. Because of the blown-up success that essentially every major media platform has had following around the famous-for-nothing, when the election came around, they focused primarily on the candidates whose controversy they could sell, not necessarily the ones who had the best ideals in mind for the country. That, in turn, narrowed the choices down eventually to Clinton and Trump.
Ever since the two major nominations have been made official, they have fought like little kids rather than civilized adults. They have held grudges, trash-talked each other to death, made up tall tales and manipulated so many people in order to appear superior. And yet we've paid more attention to this election than any other before. Perhaps I'm biased because I'm in the four-year range of new, eagerly excited voters and see immense election coverage by both media and peers daily.
But the true explanation is that this election has simply been the most entertaining in years. Because both major candidates have been well-known for decades (unlike the past two elections featuring then-unknowns Obama, and then Romney), the media had a field day of digging up their pasts rather than a chore of introducing them to the public. Every event that the candidates participated in was a scene to take down their opponent, not to establish their own goals. This election, in all, has simply been an extended Hollywood catfight with slight political undertones, and the fact that we enjoy that more is honestly terrible.
So many people have said that this election "has the worst candidates in history" and is basically "a decision of the lesser of two evils." But we chose these people, and because we chose them for the entertainment factor, it's our fault. We had some perfectly decent candidates, like John Kasich and Martin O'Malley, but we chose to ignore them. Now look at what we have. Clinton and Trump act more like they are celebrities than actual politicians, and we have been sold a real-life reality show by the media rather than a genuine campaigning process.
We could have stopped Paris Hilton. We could have stopped Nicole Richie. We could have even stopped Kim Kardashian. But because we didn't stop any of them, we now have two major candidates who personify each of their worst traits and cannot be stopped. It's our fault, America.
