Well, well, well.
Here we are, Collegiettes. By Wednesday morning, we will know whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be the 45th President of the United States. And I know you’ve heard this hundreds, if not thousands of times before, but this election has been like nothing we have seen before in our democratic society. The fear-mongering, the scandals, the mudslinging—it’s been out of control. If you are anything like me, you’ve probably been asking yourself some of these questions for well over a year now: How did it get like this?
We might want to examine a few things.Â
Comedian, political commentator and television host Bill Maher once admitted he thought that the people of America were stupid.
While I think this is condescending, I do observe that most Americans do not have the proper drive to learn enough about their politicians and/or about how their government truly functions. The Annenburg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania conducted a survey in 2014 that showed that most Americans don’t know much about their own government. 35 percent of Americans can’t name one branch of government. Only 36 percent can name all three (they are Executive, Legislative, Judicial). One in five Americans does not know how Supreme Court decisions work. More than half of Americans do not know who controls the House or the Senate.Â
David Itzkoff, a culture reporter for The New York Times, penned this tweet the day after the second presidential debate: “How did we let a TV entertainer come so close to the presidency, asks a culture on its 2nd day of celebrating a guy who wore a red sweater”?Â
His tweet emphasizes the hypocrisy of our mainstream culture to get sucked in by sideshow attractions, taking focus away from central issues. For those of you who were in a coma from October 10th to yesterday, here is a picture of what Mr. Bone looks like, on one of his CNN interviews. Â
Ken Bone became such a phenomenon that he was interviewed on both MSNBC and CNN. Now, Ken Bone himself did not do anything directly to deserve such popularity, but how many people know his name over the number of people who can accurately explain or summarize either candidate’s stance on education, infrastructure or sustainable energy (the topic Mr. Bone actually asked the candidates about)?
Sensationalism is slowly but surely becoming the only way to reach the masses now. Over the last year, the media covered candidates who would make the most splash and increase ratings for their television stations; not all candidates were covered fairly, and that is to be expected. There is a line that has been crossed, however, which has drawn the attention of some. Nicholas Confessore and Karen Yourish of The New York Times wrote an article in March researching (and proving) the $2 billion in free media Trump gained, obviously due to his outrageous statements and seemingly neverending controversies.
In the same way people can’t help but gawk at a car wreck, they can’t tear their eyes and ears away from the bombast that is the Trump campaign. Now, without a doubt, the things Trump says needs to be shown to the American public. The discussion of his persona, however, brings in a lot more attention from the viewers of these news channels and television stations. The general American public is used to being spoon-fed via short clips and soundbites. Embedding entertainment within our political system seems to be the only way to keep the attention of the majority of the populus.Â
Unfortunately, what has also become the new normal is for a multitude of people to take what a candidate or media outlet says as truth. No one wants to do the research required, because it takes time, and we all have to attend to our own busy lives. We can’t all be fact-checkers and we can’t be expected to know the intricacies of international agreements such as the Iran Nuclear Deal. It is important, however, to adequately educate oneself on statements the candidates make, whether they be to the liking of your political leaning or not.
Politifact has assessed the comments, speeches and debate statements of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump over the past year. Clinton has a scorecard rating of 25% “True,” 26% “Mostly True,” 25% “Half True,” 14% “Mostly False,” 10% “False” and 2% “Pants on Fire” (a blatant lie). Trump, on the other hand, has a scorecard rating of 4% “True,” 11% “Mostly True,” 15% “Half True,” 19% “Mostly False,” 34% “False” and 17% “Pants on Fire”. With such “yuge” disparity between the honesty of the two candidates, it hardly seems possible that Trump has had such a close run with Hillary. And, unfortunately for our country, Trump does not exist alone. He is merely a result of the one-sided, short-sighted political commentary spewed by some media outlets, bought by a great underbelly of people who now support his rhetoric.Â
In Michael Moore’s newest documentary, “Michael Moore in Trumpland,” he breaks down the psyche of the Trump voter. “[Some of his voters] don’t necessarily like him that much, and they don’t necessarily agree with him, they’re not racists and rednecks, they’re actually pretty decent people…Whether Trump means [what he says] or not, it’s kind of irrelevant, because he’s saying the things to people who are hurting…On November 8th, the dispossessed will walk into the voting booth, be handed a ballot, close the curtain, and take that lever, or felt pen or touch screen, and put a big f**king X in the box by the name of the man who has threatened to upend and overturn the very system that has ruined their lives. Donald J. Trump. They see that the elites who ruined their lives hate Trump. Corporate America hates Trump. Wall Street hates Trump. The career politicians hate Trump. The media hates Trump. After they loved him and created him. And now hate him. Thank you, media. The enemy of my enemy is who I’m voting for on November 8th…Trump’s election is going to be the biggest “f**k you” ever recorded in human history. And it will feel good. For a day. Maybe a week. Possibly a month. And then, like the Brits, who wanted to send a message so they voted to leave Europe, only to find out that if you vote to leave Europe, you actually have to leave Europe. And now they regret it…They want another election. And it ain’t going to happen. Because you used the ballot as an anger management tool…But I get it. You wanted to send a message. You had righteous anger. And justifiable anger. Well, message sent. Goodnight, America. You’ve just elected the last president of the United States.”Â
What needs to change, therefore, to ensure that Trump could not be the “last president of the United States”? To begin, the citizens of the United States need to take political responsibility into their own hands and stop being lazy investigators. Regardless of which “side of the aisle” you’re on, if you watch Fox News or CNN and let your education stop there, if you don’t bother to fact-check or investigate other reports, you aren’t any better than the people you criticize. Consult a variety of sources. Be open minded to multiple sides of the story. We need to start becoming more deeply invested in our government. Dismissing your need to deepen your understanding because you are “too cynical” is just an excuse to get out of being an active member of our democracy. If a healthy democracy is truly what we are striving for, we can’t sit around and wait for it to eventually happen—it is all up to us. It’s time we started acting like “We The People.”
Without a doubt, the future generations of this country will be studying this election year—and presumably the next four years—in their history textbooks. Essays will be written about how this all came about. When they ask us what happened, we should know what to tell them, and explain how we have (hopefully) prevented such political circuses in the future.