Slouching Towards Election Season
By Chloë C-M
Contributor
A Canadian seventeen year old girl watches the US presidential debate. She watches with the keenness of a moviegoer: at a safe distance and with an air of dissociation. This isn’t real life to her, just more incoherence stumbling into the star spangled void. But still she tunes in, the expectation of chaos luring her to the screen.
At nine o’clock on a Tuesday night, I switched on Disney plus to tune in to the Harris vs Trump Debate. The iconic blue I used to associate with the films of my childhood, now the platform for political mayhem. The telenovela that is Trump’s campaign succeeded in eclipsing my sanity. Dogs were reported eaten, plans were conceptualized and delusions of fixed elections repeated for the umpteenth time.
My favourite season online happens to be between the months of September and November. When the meme-ification of dystopian americana uproots my feed. This reflects the coping mechanism of our time: hiding the harrowing truth with a mask of indifference.
Creating this digital barrier crafted by humor and derealization makes the truth seem less daunting. The truth is that the world is getting more divisive every day. It’s easy to chalk this up as a byproduct of human behavior. The instinct to disagree, destroy and deflect is something inevitable, right? But that ignores all the things humanity holds in common. This divisiveness is a symptom of the increased polarization in the States. In the midst of mayhem we have forgotten the things that unite us.
A Canadian seventeen year old girl switches off her TV. She doesnt let the disquieting state of the world make her spiral. Instead she goes to bed, with only thoughts of unfinished assignments plaguing her mind. She bears little mind to the slight tyranny and complete belligerence she witnessed only moments ago. Life seems to go on, the sky still holds the glow of the moon, the trees still whistle in the breeze. And the incessant noise of election season doesn’t reach her.