In the next several months, we will be bombarded with political advertising and depending on the state, the annoyance level could be only marginal or could be endlessly horrific. Very little that we will be exposed to will be of an informative nature relating to how candidates will specifically improve the lives of most of their potential voters. Most of the current campaign strategies involve character assassination of the opponent and lying because accountability is no longer part of the political process. Political strategists know that you simply must repeat something several times, even if what you are repeating is demonstrably false, and people will begin to believe the lies and false statements even when they may intellectually know better.
The former president is a master of endlessly repeating lies and false statements and millions of potential voters have bought into this grand deception. The former president did not win the 2020 election and has provided no substantial evidence that any magnitude of fraud was committed to would validate this bogus claim. Also, to believe the often politically inept Democrats are capable of this level of subterfuge is simply ridiculous.
We should all feel sorry for the citizens of the handful of states that will decide the 2024 presidential election because all the negative aspects of our current corrupt political process, that is much too reliant on campaign contributions, including huge sums of unreportable dark money, will be on full display. It is illegal to coordinate dark money with regular campaign contributions on campaign strategy, but this is rarely enforced, because coordination happens regularly. The billionaire class can secretly contribute unlimited amounts of money to organizations functioning as dark money operations. Because there is no requirement to report who contributes to dark money organizations, it is difficult to determine the sheer size of dark money being used to influence state and national elections is unknown.
Perhaps the biggest problem we all face is figuring out how to separate lies, deception and bogus fiction disguised as fact, truth and honesty. Political campaigns have always had their share of lies, deception and dishonesty but previously most candidates for political office did not make these negative attributes the primary themes of their political strategy. It would be helpful if candidates would provide voters with fully developed policy positions and prospective legislative proposals so the choice would be based on how voters would be positively or negatively impacted by electing a given candidate. One of the major political parties dispensed, in the 2020 election, with a party platform outlining their broad policy positions because the presidential candidate didn’t want to be tied to positions that would make him accountable. Accountability has become something that many political campaigns now try to avoid.
The level of misinformation, largely thanks to social media (Facebook, X, Instagram, Truth Social), that voters are exposed to all the time, but more so during political campaign season, is tremendous. Conspiracy theories that have no basis on facts dominate much of what many people consider their primary news source, social media. Most of these conspiracy theories have such a farfetched rationale, to them it is hard to see how people consider them factual. Yet, millions of people believe what they view on the Internet as being truthful. There is no end in sight as to how to remedy this growing problem that is being exploited by our global advisories, most notably Russia, to corrupt our, for now, open and free democracy and turn us against one another. It seems to be working quite well over the past several years as partisan divides have hardened, our political process has become more corrupt and public sentiment has turned sour even during a time of relatively good economic indicators.
This will likely be one of the worst presidential elections most of us have ever experienced. The statement that the upcoming election is the most important of your lifetime has grown old by being endlessly repeated. The upcoming election is truly an election that could dramatically change how this country is governed if one presidential candidate is elected. Whatever the outcome is of this election, it will be a watershed moment in American history because the chaos and potential violent reaction will be a destructive force on the future of the country. The shock to society from the inevitable chaos that can be predicted will surely surprise most Americans but needs to be carefully planned for to minimize the destruction that will ensue in the aftermath of the election.
It is important to note that without the antiquated electoral college, which needs to be eliminated, the outcome of the upcoming election would not produce a president who has received millions of fewer votes, possibly 10+ million in 2024, than his opponent, but receive an electoral vote count from the electoral college that produces victory. It is possible that shenanigans in two or three states could allow state legislatures to select electoral college representatives that do not reflect how the voting public voted during the election. This could produce a monumental constitutional crisis the likes this country has never seen before when a president is installed by a bogus electoral college count and receiving less votes from the electorate. Hopefully this scenario will not play out so the chaos, while significant, is minimized.
