ESSAYS ARCHIVE

In just a few hours, we will see the results of one of the most momentous elections in American history. In just a few hours, the result that we will see will create the future of American politics for perhaps decades to come—or will it? One of the most defining characteristics of this presidential race has been the centrality of the fear of calamity. In a way, electoral messaging has accelerated to a breaking point. In the final exit poll, democratic voters listed the "state of democracy" as their top voting issue, at a whopping 58% of the poll. Combined with apocalyptic (though certainly not unfounded) messaging around climate change, the (also not unfounded) threat of the heritage foundation's project 2025 gutting the administrative state in order to facilitate a more authoritarian executive branch, and many other aspects of a potential second Trump administration such as unstable foreign policy, the slate of major voting issues has turned this election for democratic voters from choosing whatever option is in the best interest of the voter to saving America and potentially the entire world itself. This is absolutely mirrored on the republican side, as many voters are concerned with the endemic corrupting force of "wokeness", a potent energy which seeps Marxism into our institutions, incompetence into our government, brainwashing into our schools, and transgenderism into our children—the very work of the devil himself to overturn the good heart of America. Along with the threat of illegal immigrants coming into our beautiful nation and bringing drugs and crime onto our pure soil, slowly infiltrating neighborhoods until our noble American culture is swept away by foreign people that don't share our values, this election is certainly a battle for the future. For the conservative, this is a war for the soul of our country being fought between good and evil—Trump, the outsider who represents the humble yet noble American spirit, taking on the nefarious forces of the deep state and political elite. It is almost exhausting how cinematic this election is. Indeed, the textbooks are already being written. This is absolutely momentous—the question of which road our country will either go down the path of equality, civil rights, and peace (or perhaps we could say wokeness, rioting, and degeneracy) or traditional values, safety, and freedom (or perhaps we could say authoritarianism, political violence, and prejudice). Things have accelerated to the breaking point. Electoral messaging has achieved its most effective form. The election is no longer what happens in the ballot box, it is entirely the political ads we see on TV. Politics has entirely become the question of narrative. As a Pennsylvania resident, it seems that almost every single ad I have seen for the past couple weeks has been political. It is clear from this bombardment of images upon images that what these parties are advertising are images for the future. Politics is no longer the obligation of the intelligent man to exercise his constitutional right to determine who is most fit to lead the grand ol' nation of the US of A, but it is now an existential battle for the future according to whichever understanding of what issues are facing us that you subscribe to. A society of the spectacle has created a government of the spectacle. The cultural industries and forces which have permeated every single aspect of consumer society have too penetrated the process of federal elections. That's the most effective method. Celebrity endorsements and going on talk shows were not the limit in forging a massive, immersive social-political project. Engaging with culture is helpful, but becoming culture is entirely more effective. It is a shame that Jean Baudrillard died nine years before Trump's election in 2016, as it was perhaps one of the biggest affirmations of his theories. The cultural is entirely dominating—so much so that consumerism has become entirely dependent on the "cultural industries", creating an economy structured around the sign value and no longer the use value of a commodity. The spectacle has entrenched new mechanisms of power and production. After all, our president was a reality TV host. To reiterate—the former president was a reality TV host and media star. For emphasis: THE FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WAS A REALITY TELEVISION HOST, MEDIA PERSONALITY, AND OWNER OF A MASSIVE MEDIA EMPIRE. Truly, it is a shame that Baudrillard died before ever being able to witness such an event. Being a good president is easy, but getting people to vote for you is difficult. Trump understood this, that is why he dedicated much of his time while still being the sitting president to continuing to campaign across the United States, also making sure that his actions constantly fed into a spectacle—feeding a constant news cycle centered around himself. This is perhaps one of the most intriguing aspects of this current presidential race: what exactly comprises the messaging of these campaigns? For Trump's campaign, it is a fight against the woke left, the deep state (an evil force supported by and comprised of billionaire liberal elites), and internal forces which seek to tear the country and its traditional values apart. To the conservative, America is under threat by radical ideas that seek to overturn every positive aspect of the country and screw over the average, red-blooded American in order to facilitate some left-wing, woke ideological dystopia. The messaging of the republican campaign is not centered around a clear vision of the future, but saving the country from an internal, existential threat. For Kamala Harris's campaign, the messaging is heavily centered around the potential horrors that a second trump administration may bring, including a national abortion ban, a more authoritarian government, and the litany of insane proposals outlined in the project 2025 document. It is for this reason that one of Kamala Harris's most used chants is "we're not going back". Trump understood the power of maintaining a spectacle around his campaign, but while it was effective at keeping his supporters constantly engaged, it had the same effect for his opponents. This is why Harris is able to run on the negativity of that spectacle—while Trump made liking him an effective political platform, he also made disliking him an effective political platform as well. When we consider Trump and Harris's 2024 political platforms, we are faced with an interesting finding: Trump's messaging focuses primarily on the internal threat that the ideals of the left pose to the futurity of the United States, and Harris's messaging focuses primarily on the internal threat that the ideals of the right pose to the futurity of the United States. Opposition has no longer become the byproduct of engagement, but the core of political messaging itself. It has always been effective political messaging for a candidate to say that they should be elected president and the voter should hate their opponent, but it is now that the candidate can say that they should be elected president because of the hatred the voter should have for their opponent. This is the utter perfection of political messaging itself. The society of the spectacle has created a politics of pure spectacle. The primary goal of a campaign is to manufacture an existential threat—a pure spectacle of fear, while simultaneously creating the candidate as a spectacle of greatness and salvation. This explains the utter illusiveness of the Trump campaign's policies and the dominance of the grievance in voter determination. Much of the spectacle essential to republican messaging incurs the focus of grievances not necessarily connected to messaging or policy positions held by the democratic campaign. Not only has political messaging become disconnected from the actual policy proposals of the candidates, but those political messages are themselves no longer representative of the source from which they were derived. The ritual of political combat inherent to the election has consumed the entirety of the event, but that itself has become meaningless as the totality of the message consumes all of the available space possible in order to maximize the spectacle. When I say that the election of 2024 will not take place, it is not that I believe the mechanisms of government will not function properly to ensure that votes are counted correctly and the proper candidate will become inaugurated as the new president, but rather that the entire event that we are calling "the election of 2024" is not the same kind of event that brought James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt to the White House—for this event is instead a hyperreal phenomenon marked by simulacra, a giant reality television show masquerading as an election.

At the time at which I am finally finishing this essay, 26 out of the 538 electoral votes have been counted. While we can observe the totalizing force of the spectacle, it is still worth noting that I absolutely still believe in the value of political engagement. I do believe that the ideas espoused by Trump and Vance are reprehensible and hateful, and that it is still absolutely true that a Trump victory will have disastrous effects on the political, economic, and social futures of this country. On a personal level, no matter what happens, I just want the anxiety of this infuriatingly close election—that was absolutely impossible to reasonably predict the result of—to dissipate. American politics is horrific. Disturbing.