Oh thank God, the 2024 Presidential Election will end — hopefully, maybe — this week, and I'm not sure any song sums up the state of U.S. politics more than Time Warp from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
What is going on here?
I hardly see any conversations occurring in the country about the key issues of the day — the wealth gap or health care or military spending or school-to-prison pipeline or globalization. The state of media has become such that the idea of having a public discourse of important issues is long gone, replaced by he-said-she-said talking points to get elected, memes and 10-second video clips.
If I thought the state of public discourse was at all-time low heading into the 2020 election when I blasted Facebook and the state of media, is it any better now? But let's look at me, the writer, here. You're getting this commentary from a former staff writer at newspapers for 12 years, and newspapers and network news are now referred to as "legacy media."
You're getting this commentary from someone who felt there was a semblance of public discourse back in the 1900s and early 2000s and maybe even the early 2010s. But now?
Madness takes its toll. But listen closely, not for very much longer.
One of the main issues in this year's presidential election is the repeal of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court in 2022. OK, that was quite a move. It's now again a hot-button topic, and, yes, it's important. But it's obscuring other important issues.
While the federal government and Supreme Court could be coming together to balance the absurd dominance of Fanmag (Facebook, Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon and Google), like European countries are attempting to do, the Supreme Court instead overruled abortion. Hmm.
That egregious ruling pulled many people's eyes off many pressing issues of the day, including trillion-dollar technology companies' dominance in the market place. Instead of focusing on that issue, and a boatload of other important issues, we're debating abortion rights again.
I thought we, as a society, agreed about the legalities of the touchy subject of abortion. It's really more of a moral issue than a legal issue. Right? But Roe v. Wade, which was ruled upon in Jan. 1973, is a debate again 51 years later.
(Refrain: All) Let's do the Time Warp again. Let's do the Time Warp again.
Another key talking point in this 2024 Presidential Election is immigration, securing the borders, etc. But here's the problem with that. California, the main border state and gateway to immigrants, went through this in the 1900s — the 1980s to be exact.Back in the early '80s, California saw a huge influx of immigrants, and that led to a whole lotta racism and struggle, but landed on legislation that then saw 3.5 million legal immigrants come into California between 1984 and 1994.
Nowadays, the outdated immigration system isn't working, but there are easy fixes that everyone, regardless of political party, agree on. And here is what is baffling. Immigration is by far impacting California more than any other state — not even close. Yet in California, immigration is not a hot-button topic like it is in non-border states.
(Refrain: All) Let's do the Time Warp again. Let's do the Time Warp again.
Look. The Snooze Button Generation prides itself in being a nonpartisan blog, and we're not promoting a certain candidate here. We're simply saying that the state of political discourse is at an all-time low. It's obviously because of how we obtain news — or opinion masquerading as news.
I'm hoping that this is the nadir, and we somehow return to reasonable, issues-related discourse. But I'm worried that with our echo-chamber, smart-phone world, we'll never return to actual issues again. Perhaps the advancement of all this personal technology has an inverse effect on many individuals' personal progress.
(Refrain: All) Let's do the Time Warp again. Let's do the Time Warp again.