On Nov. 5, Americans from the Aloha State of Hawaii to the Pine Tree State of Maine will enter voting booths and decide the next President of the United States of America. But despite the vast size of the US, which with its 50 states, makes up the size of Europe, it seems almost ironic that only a handful of those 50 states truly determine the results of the election – thanks to the electoral college, which is an entirely other subject in itself. But despite the irritation one may feel from the current method of election, the system exists and now we have to deal with its consequences. And one result of the Harris-Trump fight for their ‘battleground states’ is the persistent barrage of heated advertisements, calibrated to strike directly at the American public.
With one of the battleground states being Pennsylvania, the home of Bucknell University, I have no doubt in my mind that at some point during this semester you have come into contact with some piece of, to be frank, political propaganda. I have seen countless ads on YouTube clipping both candidates out of context and bashing them on it, declaring that one is a Marxist and the other is a Monarch. And all I could do was sit there and question, “Who is this for?” and “Who is this convincing?”
It’s frustrating to see these politicians in what is supposed to be a collaborative form of government – a democracy – tear each other apart and make outrageous and offensive claims; one ad said that Trump would arrest all news reporters and political opponents if elected, and mobilize the military against the American people. Another ad claimed that Harris wanted to allow illegal immigrants to flood over the border and slaughter Americans. If these are truly the two options we have for the United States, then Democrat or Republican, we must be doomed. This extreme rhetoric is everywhere, and it’s disgusting. Harris claims to be a champion of freedom against the Capitol-Charging Trump, but she’s playing into the same tactics that are contributing to America’s extreme political polarization. And then Trump’s in La La Land groveling to his far-right base, pretending to become a faithful Christian just to persuade constituents. We live in a democracy of hypocrisy – and sadly, it’s everywhere.
And returning to the original question of who this is for and who this is convincing, I really have no idea. There is no way that the truly undecided four percent of American voters are being swayed by this blatant propaganda. It is also important to note that both candidates never elaborate on their plan in their advertisements. They spend millions of dollars to force feed the equivalent of political junk food down our throats, and provide no detail into what they really want to do. And I believe that it’s through this that the odd concept of ‘political white noise’ emerges; we know that the two candidates are fundamentally different, however, since they both refuse to explain what they want to do and instead just attack the other candidate, they seem like the same product only in different packaging. I think that this indecision and confusion is actually shown in the national polls; since the start of October, Trump climbed to 47 percent and has sat there until this present day (New York Times). Meanwhile Harris has remained completely stagnant at 49 percent since early September (New York Times). A two point difference is really a flip of a coin.
All I can say is that we’re sick of the ads. They get us nowhere, provide no detail and undermine the honor of the Executive branch of the United States. If there was a shift into explaining brief bullet points of what they want to accomplish, that may be productive. But instead we get the harmful content and rhetoric that has been tearing apart the seams of the American public for almost a decade now. And hopefully by the next cycle of elections, there may be more civil discussions on how to run the most powerful country in the world, and not a middle school food fight.
