I wanted to briefly give my thoughts about the USA Elections that just happened. Because I think there are some interesting things to take away from it.
I have absolutely no stake in this. I am Dutch, I live in the Netherlands, I have zero ties to anything in America.
And still .. almost everyone in my family followed the election. I stayed up ~1.5 hours longer than usual, just to see the first results coming in. The first time I checked my phone the next day, I had a message from a family member saying that Trump won. (Followed by many sad emojis.)
We all knew who were running. We all knew the date. We all checked that night, and then checked the next morning. We had some conversations about what it meant now that Trump won again, and why he probably won again, at the dinner table. We all knew that Trump’s win was a disaster and we cared about it, even though it has nothing to do with us, at least not directly.
And then we switch to the side of the Americans. Those who have a huge stake in all of this, those who can actually vote and have to live with the consequences.
On election day, there was a spike in Google searches for “did Biden drop out” (and similar phrases, such as “when did Biden drop out”). Many Americans confirmed this in their comments by saying family members were “surprised their candidate wasn’t on the ballot” or had to “pick on the fly when Joe Biden turned out to not be running”.
Several polls done before and during election day had another interesting statistic. They said that roughly 80% of voters had already decided who to vote in September. The past few months, the parties threw millions and millions of dollars into their campaign. Americans reported that they wanted election day to arrive just so that it would be over and they’d stop being bombarded with all of it.
And it meant absolutely nothing. Most voters already knew who they’d vote before all of that. And, I guess, many of them decided “gonna be Biden” and were then utterly surprised when he turned out to not even be running.
Honestly, I think the average person in the Netherlands knew more about that election and cared more about it than the average American. And I don’t make that statement lightly, knowing how devastated many are by Trump’s win, and how this election had record turnouts.
It’s mostly a reminder of two things.
First of all, nobody knows anything. Political campaigns are like marketing: you try a bunch of stuff, and you’re lucky if you happen to accidentally understand human psychology and strike a chord. Even after all these years, both major parties (in the USA) are just doing the exact same stuff they’ve always done. Show up at the same places. Hand out loads of pamphlets with empty quotes. Get celebrity endorsements. None of that actually works, and the data repeatedly confirms it, but they keep doing it anyway.
Because they have no clue how to actually campaign. They’re just doing the same thing as always, just with a different face on the poster.
Those at the “top”—those who’ve always had money, and safety, and some comfortable job with power—have no clue what your regular everyday people actually care about. Beyonce supports you? You promise to “stand up for the minorities”? Why would I care? Enact specific plans to bring me food on the table and a roof over my head, and then we’ll talk.
Trump? He understands.
Let me be clear: he’s an idiot, he lies, he’s a convicted criminal, Trump is a disaster.
I’m merely talking about actually campaigning and winning an election. He simply looks at what people want, then tells them he’ll give them that. And guess what? A vast majority votes for the guy! Never mind that his plans are unconstitutional, vague, or flat-out impossible to execute.
Second of all, the Democrats make the same mistake time and time again. They always appeal to intellectualism. They always think that reasonable arguments and policies will win them voters. They follow the ancient campaign playbook, and it happened to work out just often enough that they never see a reason to change. The only reason Biden won the previous election is because of how many people experienced Trump’s fuck-ups and didn’t want that again. From the start of this election cycle, he wasn’t popular, not even with his own party.
Politics, and winning an election, have absolutely nothing to do with being reasonable or actually being a good leader. And, again, Trump understands, the others don’t.
Most people do not follow reason. They don’t think in terms of arguments, or data, or science. They have emotions, they have things they want, and they’ll come up with whatever excuse to “justify” that. Emotions rule us, emotions decide how we remember things, emotions decide how we act. Like many people know, it takes 100 great compliments to offset 1 bad comment. Or, despite the science on exercise and health being obvious and well-known, the number of overweight people dying early deaths is still climbing.
I wish it were different, of course. I’ve always advocated that schools should only teach two things: logical thinking and communication. If you can think critically and follow arguments, you can learn anything and get anywhere. You can solve any problem. Easily. And if you can communicate that, you can help others solve those problems too.
Instead, nobody learns any critical thinking, and most people have no clue how science works or what an argument even is. The average person, and also the average American, is simply not equipped to handle any politician appealing to that.
In an ideal world, the entire idea of an election would be ridiculous! Why would “opinion” or “personality” matter? Here’s the problem, here’s the science and the arguments, and here’s the best solution, demonstrably so. The only job of politicians would be to read research and implement.
But we don’t live in an ideal world. The Democrats stick to some facade of being “more intellectual” or being “more decent”, and it is nearly the same as just handing all the power to Trump for free. Even when Obama was president, the Republicans went against him every single step of the way. He was barely able to do anything, simply because they obstructed everything. They didn’t care about solving problems or running a country, they were just being annoying toddlers, and it worked.
Destruction is always easier than creation. If you don’t care about lies or evidence, you will always have an easier job manipulating people’s emotions and getting what you want. Not a single election was ever won based on who had the best arguments and solutions.
Another example of this is the massive bias against Kamala Harris for being a black woman. The majority of black voters usually vote Democrat. But now that the candidate was a woman, many confidently said they were going to vote Trump. Because a woman as president, well, that was simply outrageous. Unthinkable!
Not a single argument in sight. In Europe, many women have successfully led a country or even the entire European Union. There is nothing to be found here except random assumptions and stupid emotions. But when such a large group of people just says “not going to vote for you, WHATEVER you say”, you’ve almost lost the election by default.
When I studied at university, we had one really great class on this topic, which showed—numerically—how losing one group of voters for SURE was way more damning than you’d think. Or, conversely, how the fact that certain organizations will ALWAYS vote Trump, all of them, is a massive advantage to him that is constantly underestimated.
And so, my advice would be a weird one. If the Democrats don’t want to give the keys to America to the Republicans for the next 20 years, they have to stop doing what they’ve always done.
They have to lie, lie, lie. They have to listen to what people want, listen what people are angry or sad about, and then say they’ll fix all of that. Whatever it takes! Be vague! Promise things that anyone with a brain knows can’t be done! Tell them it’s all the aliens’ fault!
It will win you the election. And then you have the power to do the actual smart thing, which is solve problems based on science, data, and sound reasoning.
It would be the opposite of what politicians are known for. Instead of breaking promises for the worse, you break promises for the better. You lie not for selfish gain, but so you actually get the keys to turn the car around.
It’s okay to admit that the average person is stupid. It’s the reality. I’m including myself here. Humans are just monkeys with slight upgrades to body and brain. Our perceived intelligence is just that—humans telling themselves how smart humans are—and otherwise built on the shoulders of the many inventors before us.
If you can make them vote for you, though, then you can actually change that reality and turn Americans into more engaged and critical thinkers.
I, personally, haven’t voted in a while. You can probably see why. (I also wrote a Dutch article about it some time ago, when this blog was still completely Dutch.) Voting for anything would mean that I show support for a terrible person in a terrible system that will certainly act against my interests. It would be like rewarding a toddler for shitting all over your house. It would be like giving someone money to screw you over and make you lose your job.
With so much else going on in my life, I can’t convince myself to vote on anyone. At least not the past ten years.
While reading (and listening to) some discussions on the election, though, one specific idea stood out to me.
Many people echoed my sentiment. Anyone who tries some logical thinking, just once in a while, is bound to arrive at the same place. Politics are bullshit, they’re all lying, none of this is helping. But, they said, I still vote every time.
Why? What convinces them? To what end? They said:
A vote on a candidate is not a show of support. It’s not a confirmation that you agree with all their plans. It’s a promise. A promise that, for the next 4 years, you will keep telling them to do better and solve problems. The belief that this candidate, for whom you voted, is the one most likely to be moved and pushed towards where you want to go.
In other words, vote for the person you think might end up closer to what you want. Vote for the candidate who isn’t doing great right now, but can be persuaded over time to change and see new ways.
I find this a compelling argument. Maybe, one day, it will convince me to vote again and become more politically active. Maybe one day I’ll see a candidate who has shown they can change their mind and listen to people, one with a track record and a following, and I can vote on them despite all their bullshit and lies. Because I believe that, once they have some power, they might actually do some good.
For now, the USA Elections (2024) just reminded me of all these thoughts and prompted me to write this article. Let’s hope Trump doesn’t start a new civil war, world war, trade war, any kind of war. And yes, our Dutch government is a right-wing mess too at the moment, but I left that out of the article to stop myself from writing 10,000 words on this ;)
Those were my thoughts,
Tiamo