Guys, people are scared. They’re scared about what’s going to happen to our country when the next president is elected. Regardless of who you’re siding with, most people feel a bit nervous about both candidates. At very least they feel terrified of one of the candidates.
So what’s different this time? Why are they so much scarier? How’d we get here?
Here are three things to keep in mind rather than give into the fear.
1. We have more media access than ever before.
To start off with, I’m not entirely convinced these two candidates are that much worse than ones we’ve had in the past. We just have more access to the knowledge. And because 24-hour news cycles thrive on fear so they get watched, they have to dig up the worst and keep that in front of us at all times.
I might be going out on a limb here, but I wonder if we would have been just as scared of Lincoln, Breckinridge, and Douglas if they’d been covered by the 2016 media. Corruption isn’t new, and aggressive personalities aren’t new. We just have unlimited access to that knowledge as well as thousands of people putting spin on that knowledge.
2. We hear more opinions than ever before, so they tend to be strong opinions.
This leads me to my next point. We hear opinions everywhere. Facebook was still relatively young and pure during the last election cycle, so we didn’t hear as many opinions, see as many links, or have as many videos thrown in our face.
Because there are so many posts every day, people have realized their opinions need to be extreme in order to get likes and shares. A post like, “Guys, we’re going to be okay,” doesn’t go viral.
3. Candidates know that fear wins the vote.
Finally, the candidates are so scary because of us. We have shown that fear gets votes, so the parties play with fear. They know that if we’re terrified of the “enemy”, they’ll get our vote.
I truly believe the only way to combat this is to stop being scared. The more we’re ruled by fear, the more they’ll use fear to rule us. But when we have level heads and choose to be informed but not scared, things will change.
It’s up to us. If we want the candidates of 2020 to be less scary, we have to stop perpetuating the fear cycle. Are you willing to join me?
Great insights! I agree that we do have much more access to news and we are constantly hearing about what’s wrong in the world. The 24 hour news cycle definitely doesn’t help anything. But I am glad that we have much more to hope in than any presidential candidate. 2 Timothy 1:7