In the 2024 election, you have two people: one who keeps forgetting what he wants to say, and you wish the other would forget what he wants to say. And the sad part? both supporters of the candidates think the other is an idiot while our’s is the god of some kind and savor of humanity !
So we’ve got 36 of the world’s top 100 universities. More international students than anywhere else. Yet somehow our best and brightest gave us… these two?
Picture explaining this to someone from 2124: “Yeah, so America invented the internet, put men on the moon, created the iPhone, cured diseases that killed millions. Oh, and for president? We picked these 2 …” They’d think you were joking. Except the joke’s on us.and it holds; Seven-in-ten voters say the 2024 campaign did not make them feel proud of the country $^1$
so what went wrong ?
A Broken Market Where Fear Is the Only Product
So picture this: I’m selling phones, but instead of bragging about my camera or battery life, I just tell you the other company’s phones are actually bombs that’ll blow your face off. Now you’re stuck buying my crappy phone because, well, you like your face. That’s basically American politics - I don’t need to make a better product if I can just convince you the alternative will kill you.
This is what happens when democracy becomes a broken market. We’re not selling vision or competence anymore - we’re selling escape routes from your worst nightmares. And to really understand how we got here, you need to look at two things: the ancient monkey software still running in our heads and how power has always worked since, like, forever.
We’ve turned this dysfunction into a science. Modern campaigns don’t even pretend to care about actually governing. They’ve got the formula down cold: grab whatever your opponent’s good at, twist it into something terrifying, then beat that dead horse until voters can’t think about anything else. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth didn’t invent this playbook, but man did they perfect it. Now everybody runs the same con.
And get this - bullshit literally travels faster than truth now. The tech platforms? They’re basically crack dealers for outrage. Anger drives engagement, engagement drives ad money, ad money drives stock prices. Facebook’s algorithm doesn’t care if you’re spreading facts or fever dreams - it just wants those sweet, sweet clicks. Twitter’s whole business model is rewarding whoever can start the biggest dumpster fire. We’ve built a machine that literally prints money from political chaos.
Every election cycle, the bar gets lower. Every campaign gets nastier. Every politician who shows even a hint of decency gets eaten alive by their own party for being “weak.” We’re in a race to the bottom, and everybody’s got rocket boosters strapped to their ass.
At Least We’re Not as Bad as Them™
So here’s where we’ve landed: instead of telling us what they’ll actually do in office, politicians just point at the other guy and scream “but look how much worse THEY’LL be!” It’s like watching two dumpster fires argue about which one smells better.
Remember when debates were about, I don’t know, actual policy? Now they’re basically WWE with worse acting. Moderator asks about healthcare, and within thirty seconds somebody’s ranting about laptops or emails or whatever scandal is trending that week.
Here’s the thing - it’s not just what they’re saying, it’s how they’re saying it. A massive study analyzing 8 million congressional speeches from 1879 to 2022 found something wild - evidence-based language peaked in the 1970s and has been nosediving ever since. We’re talking about Congress literally shifting from words like “fact” and “proof” to “believe” and “feel.” ; When polarization goes up, evidence-based language goes down. So as politicians stopped working together, they also stopped using facts. $^2$
The Democrats are out here warning that Republicans will literally end democracy as we know it. Republicans counter that Democrats will destroy the American way of life. Meanwhile, actual problems - you know, little things like crumbling infrastructure, garbage education, healthcare that bankrupts you - just sit there. Rotting. Getting worse by the day.
Here’s the really pathetic part: we’ve got all these supposedly brilliant minds - Ivy League credentials coming out of their ears, think tanks burning through millions, consultants pulling down six figures to strategize - and the absolute pinnacle of their collective genius is “at least we’re not as bad as them.”
That’s it. That’s literally the best American political thought can produce right now. Not “here’s our vision for a better future” but “here’s how they’ll make your nightmare come true.”
The numbers tell the whole sad story. Look at the 2024 election: Harris supporters? 52% voting “against Trump” versus 48% actually voting “for Harris.” Trump’s crowd? 33% “against Harris,” 66% “for Trump”$^3$. So basically half of Harris voters weren’t even voting FOR her - they were just voting AGAINST him.
And the money? Lord god, the money. Campaign spending hit 15.5 billion dollars$^4$. That’s more than the entire GDP of Nicaragua. We’re literally burning more cash than some countries produce in a year just to tell each other how much the other guy sucks, not to build anything. Just to convince you that the other team is slightly more terrible than yours!
So no wonder a significant portion of voters expressed negative sentiments about the 2024 presidential campaign. Approximately 74% of voters described the campaign as too negative, and 64% felt it wasn’t focused on important policy debates $^1$
We Actually Agree on Most Stuff
Here’s the kicker that’ll make your head spin: Americans actually agree on way more than the shouting matches suggest. We’re talking 86% wanting universal background checks$^5$. Another 86% saying hell yeah to fixing our crumbling roads and bridges$^6$. Oh, and that same magical 86% thinks Medicare should stop letting pharma companies rob us blind on drug prices$^7$.
That’s not a divided nation - that’s a consensus so massive it’d make dictators jealous.
So what gives? Why does it feel like we’re seconds away from civil war when most of us are basically on the same page? Simple: boring agreement doesn’t sell ads. You know what does? That screaming 15% on the fringes. They’re the ones getting all the airtime while the rest of us just shake our heads and try to get on with our lives.
The real problem isn’t that we just disagree - it’s that we’re not even having the same conversation anymore. One side’s talking about individual freedom, the other’s talking about collective responsibility. Both valid frameworks, but good luck finding middle ground when you can’t even agree on what game you’re playing.
This moral disconnect turns everything toxic. Each side doesn’t just think the other is wrong - they think they’re evil. And you can’t compromise with evil, right? So compromise itself becomes a four-letter word. Any politician who dares reach across the aisle gets torched by their own team faster than you can say “bipartisan.” We’ve literally built a system that punishes the exact behavior democracy needs to function.
It’s like we’re all stuck in the same burning building, but instead of working together to find the exit, we’re arguing about whose fault the fire is. Meanwhile, the whole place is turning to ash around us.
How We Fix It Here:
So France basically said “screw this noise” in 2017. Macron came out of nowhere, built his own movement from scratch, and won in a landslide. Just straight up ignored both traditional parties. Taiwan’s using ranked choice voting now, which basically murdered negative campaigning - turns out trashing your opponent backfires when you need their supporters’ second-choice votes. Who knew?
But America? We’re stuck in this doom loop where both parties have cracked the code: keeping their base pants-shittingly terrified works better than actually doing their jobs.
What actually breaks this cycle? Honestly? Probably nothing until we face-plant into rock bottom. Maybe when we wake up one day and realize all our allies ditched us, or we’re staring down a nasty civil war. The faster we hit that concrete floor, the faster things might - and I’m really stretching the word “might” here - start getting better.
Look, the Roman Republic lasted 500 years before it imploded into empire. We’re at 248 and counting. By historical standards, we’re basically a teenage nation - all hormones and terrible decisions and thinking we know everything when we don’t know jack. Maybe this is just our acne phase. Maybe we’ll grow out of it.
But probably not if we keep rewarding exactly the wrong behavior. Every time we vote for the lesser evil because the greater evil makes us wet our pants, we’re basically training politicians like dogs. We’re telling them fear works. Division works. Being a complete asshole works. Then we act shocked when they keep being complete assholes.
Next time some campaign tells you it’s them or literal apocalypse, just laugh in their face. Flip that ballot over and find whoever’s actually built something real - probably not coming from the big two. Maybe some scrappy third-party nobody who still remembers what integrity looks like. Back the builder, not the bomb-thrower.
The solution isn’t rocket science. Just Stop rewarding terrible behavior.
Closing Thoughts
This might make me sound like a doomer, but honestly? Given all our problems, I still wouldn’t pick anywhere else to live. We’re still killing it in science, tech, business, culture - basically everything except picking decent leaders. Just because we’re the best at a lot of stuff doesn’t mean we can’t be way, way better at the stuff we suck at.
The game’s not over. We’re just really good at making things harder than they need to be. But if there’s one thing Americans do well, it’s fixing things once we finally admit they’re broken.
So yeah, our politics are a joke. But we’re also the country that invented jazz and the internet and convinced the world that $15 avocado toast was perfectly reasonable. so there is hope, alot of it actully.
The choice is still ours. Let’s not blow it.
1 How voters saw the 2024 US presidential campaign | Pew Research Center
2 https://studyfinds.org/congressional-speeches-less-evidence-based/
4 Cost of Election • OpenSecrets
6 https://navigatorresearch.org/the-bipartisan-infrastructure-law-remains-broadly-popular/