Elections represent one of the most important hallmarks of a
democratic political system. It is a
periodic opportunity for the citizens of the country to discuss, debate and
seriously evaluate the positions of the various candidates on the key issues of
the day and then vote for the candidate that they think best represents their
views on the issues that are important to them. Unfortunately all this process
is seriously being undermined in this election cycle.
The current election cycle started more than a year back, in
the spring of 2015, with more than sixteen candidates vying for the Republican
nomination and about four candidates competing for the Democratic
nomination. It is the Republican
nomination process that attracted the most attention of the media and the
public. It has been primarily due to
their eventual nominee, Donald Trump.
The Republican side was able to garner so much attention because of the
outrageousness of the statements and positions of Donald Trump. When he felt that the attention and spotlight
was waning from him from time to time, he would make yet another even more
outrageous statement than the previous one.
This guaranteed that the spotlight seldom wavered from Donald
Trump. The vitriol and the deeply
personal nature of the name calling that ensued was unprecedented in modern American
politics.
The American public and the world at large found all this
initially very entertaining. But while
we were being entertained through the hurling of insults, the personal belittlings,
the discussion of the size of the candidates anatomies, and the hormonal cycles
of the women who were part of the circus, we completely lost out on the
opportunity for any serious discussion of any of the matters that are
confronting the country and the world.
In fact, Donald Trump, the nominee of the Republican Party, has not
articulated a single well thought out position on any topic. His positions and musings are mostly limited
to what he Tweets, using the 140 character limited micro blogs.
The pattern is continuing in the general election. We are now into the first week of the general
election cycle and we have about thirteen more weeks to go. This last week we have again been consumed by
the insults that Donald Trump has now hurled at a Gold Star family of Muslim
origins and his fights with the leadership team of his party. In all likelihood, we are going to continue a
similar pattern till the general election day.
President Obama once stated that elections have
consequences. The issues that the next
President has to deal with are not trivial.
Just to list a few, on the domestic front, we have growing income
inequality, corporate hegemonies, especially in the financial sector, that
could barrel us towards another economic disaster, growing student debts, stagnant
middle class wages and so on. On the
international front, the world is still smoldering from the effects of the ill-advised
Iraq war and the embers of those smoldering flames are now traveling to America,
Europe, Africa and Asia and is threatening the peace, tranquility and way of
life that we are used to since World War II.
The result of this election is going to determine who is going to deal
with these problems and how it will be addressed. It is a travesty of the democratic process that
the electorate will have to choose the next President without fully knowing or
having a serious conversation and debate about the views and solutions that
each candidate has.
This election cycle may be lost for just the silly. But if this is not an isolated cycle, our
country and the world at large will pay a huge price. We need to seriously examine how we got here
and a collective effort has to be made to ensure that we don’t go down this
path again. There are many contributing
factors, but the main reason is the media.
The media provided the megaphone to Donald Trump and let him spew out
the vitriol with unhindered access to the public. The media, may ultimately be a business and
they have to be worried about their bottom line. They go where the ratings are. But they also have a civic duty, unlike any
other industry. If the entire media
rushes to where the tabloids are, we will soon be searching for the lowest
common denominators of our society. The
airwaves are now filled 24 hours. There
is constant regurgitation of the same trivia and it creates an illusion of
importance through sheer repetition. Then there are the paid analysts on the
shows. They are on the air strictly to parrot
the partisan views of their side and to create conflict and hence drama on the
air. They do not contribute in any
manner to the debate.
It may already be too late and the various actors policing
themselves is just wishful thinking. The
corrosiveness of what we are witnessing may be here to stay. And we may not have seen the bottom yet.
