And the 46th president of the United States is…
A toss-up. Undecided. Too close to call. Red. No, blue. Purple? Well gee, what do the pollsters say?
The one thing we can all count on is the inability of any mainstream media to provide an accurate prediction. Many polls foresaw a blue wave in 2020. However, the U.S. Senate will likely remain red. The House of Representatives will remain blue, but the GOP added seats. The presidential race looks to be one of the tightest elections of my lifetime.
Blue wave?
We all thought that 2016 was an anomaly. The polls predicted Clinton would easily defeat Trump. Wrong! Biden went into the election with a seemingly insurmountable lead, according to the polls. Even if Biden wins, the polls were woefully inaccurate, once again. How do the prognosticators get it so wrong in consecutive presidential elections? Why are all media outlets so flawed in their ability to correct these apparent errors and learn from their electoral coverage mistakes?
Oh, wait. It’s those darn shy voters, isn’t it?
Of course that must be the answer. People were just too shy to admit a Trump preference. They would rather have dodged the question or outwardly lied when queried concerning their political preference. They probably feared open, free speech would result in a backlash of anger, ridicule, and attack. In other words, shyness repressed their capacity to exercise their 1st amendment rights.
Shyness can be weird. I knew a guy who once told me that he had a shy bladder. As his personal confession concluded, I anxiously awaited the punch line. Alas, there was not a drop of laughter to share. He was as serious as a full bladder on a 500-mile road trip.
He urinated without issue when completely alone. But place him in the company of another human being, and he couldn’t eke out a teeny drip of pee. More than once I witnessed this phenomenon. I’d stroll into a public restroom while he stood inside a bathroom stall.
“Oh, I can’t go now,” he’d stammer, while quickly departing the toilet and heading back into the hallway.
If you were in eyesight, his bladder refused to function, no matter how high the urinary levels. That damn organ was just “too shy” to perform if there was an audience. A psychosomatic reaction I’m sure, but the physical results, or lack thereof, were indisputable. Truth be told, he couldn’t piss on his feet if they were on fire when somebody stood next to him.
The truth and the media are on divergent paths.
When I was a kid, there were only a few media outlets, with finite broadcast times. These journalists and reporters delivered news stories while the audience determined how they felt about the facts. This was mostly an evening event.
Now multitudes of media outlets pump out news stories 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Today’s audience is told how to feel about the reports and later must determine if it’s the truth.
Truth be told again, the American people don’t know what to believe from the media during election seasons. The media has clearly lost their ability or desire to report unbiased, non-sensationalized journalistic reports. There’s little credibility left. They’d rather piss on us and tell us it’s raining than focus on truth in reporting.
This is real. This is not some hypothetical theory conjured from the deep psychological recesses of the mind. There’s an incessant, flowing stream of propaganda that the American voters must wade through each election in an ever increasingly frustrating attempt to glean the truth from the money machines and the media.
Does anybody want to fix it?
Doubtful. With social media, 24/7 news coverage, etc., the switch never gets flipped off. Everybody has an opinion and nobody seems too shy to share his or her viewpoint once the soapbox is presented, no matter how many times we say piss-off.