By: Wladimir Sarmiento
The presidential election process in this country has turned into a circus. We parade candidates around stages and stadiums, indulge in the latest meaningless scandals and controversies about each candidate, and watch them attack and harass each other personally with an amount of glee only comparable to that of Roman citizens as they paid to see this week’s slave get chewed up in a den of lions. For many, the presidential elections have turned into modern day bread and circuses; a popularity contest that distracts us from the real issues facing this nation.
I have no reservations about unapologetically disclosing my own hypocrisy, and this article will be no exception: while condemning the election process for its reality-show-like nature, I must admit it is an entirely necessary part of the process. The office of President of the United States is arguably the most powerful position a human being can hold, and as such there is no doubt the person holding it has an incredible amount of responsibility to all the people of the world when making the extremely influential decisions that come his or her way every day in the Oval Office. For this reason, we must be wary of allowing the process by which that office is filled to be decided by a contest where clowns with fringe viewpoints snag all attention and legitimate candidates get ignored in the meantime.
That being said, we would be remiss if we forgot that the president’s office exists to represent the American people, and the reality is that before this election cycle, it appeared that the American people were not too interested in this representation. Politics is a dull subject for many Americans- dull enough that the United States is behind almost every single developed country in terms of voter turnout. A May 2015 Pew Research poll found that only 53% of registered voters actually voted in the 2014 midterm elections, down from a still not impressive 61.8% turnout for the 2012 presidential election. Compared with many other European countries like Sweden with an 86% turnout and Belgium with 87%, the system in this country is doing something wrong when motivating the population to vote.
And which portion of the population is voting the least? Surely it must be middle-aged people, too cynical about the future of the country to care about what happens to it, right? Or elderly people, who would rather leave the decision of this country’s future to the “young folk” that will inhabit it for many years to come. No. In fact, according to the United States Census Bureau, in 2014 a staggeringly low 38 percent of eligible voters aged 18 to 24 voted in the mid terms. Put simply, it is the youth of this nation, those that have the most to gain or lose at each election, that do not care about who is representing them in the government.
This election cycle has started earlier than many election cycles before it, and there are an unprecedented number of candidates in the running, especially for the Republican nomination. Going back to the bread and circuses parallel, it is as if the circus upgraded its shows from a measly five-way battle between the regular ensemble of gladiators and lions to an all out war involving pyrotechnics, monster trucks, and inexplicable additions like a whole colony of orangutans added to the mix. Except, of course, in the presidential race, there are very few pyrotechnics and monster trucks, the all out war mostly involves a lot of middle aged-to-elderly people insulting each other, and there is only one orangutan-like creature participating—and trust him, he’s really, really rich.
I bet you chuckled a little bit while reading that barely disguised jab at Donald Trump, and that demonstrates the exact reason that, ridiculous though they might be, the bread and circuses-like attraction of the elections is entirely necessary. The truth is, the ridiculous display that is on television and the internet every night is getting people excited for the election. If the easily distracted youth of this nation find the need to vote in 2016 because this especially vicious cycle of elections has brought certain issues to their attention, in my mind the bread and circuses is benefitting the entire nation by indirectly increasing representation.
So while some of those that care about politics slam their heads against brick walls every time we see a quote from Donald Trump insulting a whole race of people, or Ben Carson supporting the values of this week’s medieval philosophy, I will thank the attention seekers that seemingly poison the office we rely on to make world-altering decisions. Because for all of the ignorance they espouse, there is a stronger force that counters it: the attention of the public.
