The updates ceaselessly air on every news channel, political blog and Facebook rant. The memes haunt us, the out-of-context quotes revile us and the whole process shames us – the 2016 presidential race is accelerating.
With debate after debate and as the endless news cycle keeps turning, we are constantly reminded about what candidates are up to, their opinions on every issue and the rash things they say.
With just under a year to go until ballots are cast, this election season has been thus far the most interesting and disheartening. In one corner we have rich blowhards riling the masses with accentuated speech that appeals to the fringes of the political spectrum – a group that often yells everything it’s thinking. And in the other corner we have calculated blowhards with somewhat better hair, attracting a whole other spectrum that also shouts everything it’s thinking.
What we have is a shouting match – a perpetual culture war egged on by sound bites and fueled by fear – fear of differing opinions and alternative worldviews.
With so many candidates reaching for the presidency, it’s surprising very few seem to be taking the levelheaded approach – campaigning on platforms advocating practical policy solutions for the issues facing the country. Many candidates are making outrageous statements promising things they have no legal authority to guarantee nor what common sense says is plausible. Very little working policy is addressed and real issues that a president could control are not often talked about.
Perhaps it’s not so much the candidates’ fault — all candidates want is our attention, and that attention is hard to get without either shouting at us or clickbaiting us with headlines that are sure to peak our interest or disgust. So whom do we have to blame for all the political nonsense? Ourselves. We like the shouting, we like the absurd speech, we like to reinforce our viewpoints and we like to be entertained.
What we are attracted to is infotainment – the inaccurate information that is over-simplified and over-generalized to draw wrong, misleading conclusions on a whole array of topics. We like to shallowly delve into topics and articles that spoon-feed us snippets of information in candy coating and packaged with elements of truth. Overall this practice makes us believe we know something, but the truth is we rarely scratch the surface of any topic. We rarely form unique opinions and we rarely can talk at length in a civilized manner on matters of importance.
If we want better candidates we must first hold ourselves to higher expectations. We have to care enough about the issues to do a little research now and then – to understand where people are coming from and what are possible solutions to fix the problems. We need to create our own opinions without the reliance on some talking head telling us how we should think. We deserve better, but only if you can take the time to better you.
This election shouldn’t be about talking points and hollow words. It should be about practical policy, real issues, real solutions and real people. We need to invest our time into politics in order have a chance at making a difference. We need someone to hold the American public to higher standards, and to talk to us like educated adults and bring viable solutions across party lines to the table, and that person is you.
If you don’t like the direction the country is headed, why? And why not do something about it.
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