November is around the corner. This means it’s time for elections! Over the last few months, you might have seen a few commercials about our candidates. These commercials often have a common goal—convincing the general public to vote for this candidate. But unfortunately, we often see politicians continuously trying to slander their competition to have a better chance at winning.
Slandering each other to win the most votes is not a good look when claiming to be a competent, fair candidate. All this shows is your actual character in your commercial’s next ten to thirty seconds. Because of this, when someone thinks of a politician, they often think of the different methods of manipulation they used to win a particular election.
A lot of the time, the chosen method is harming someone else’s character. However, harming someone else’s character is not a way of earning a title. Yes, votes can be won by slandering, but being the winner and earning it are two separate things. Winning something can easily be obtained if you use dirty methods. Earning is when you do all the steps to win something while sticking to your moral compass.
Another dirty method these commercials use is coming up with ridiculous rumors or stereotypes and making a whole episode based on that thought process. Using stereotypes or even some rumors is a waste of a commercial because it usually does not have any other substance to this commercial.
Another tactic many politicians use is the scare tactic. During the last two years of the pandemic, a significant election came and went. Whenever we saw the commercials about who we should vote for in the presidential election, there was a common theme of the republican side of the commercial.
This tactic was called fear mongering. The scare tactic is usually used during a time of panic. In the 2020 election, many scary things started to happen in America. We had our pandemic, riots in the streets due to police brutality, and many other protests. The republican side used these courses of events to their advantage by showing a 911 call going to direct voice mail. This commercial was to scare its viewers about what would happen if we defunded the police.
These commercials are very dangerous when it comes to people feeling safe. When someone uses a scare tactic, it can mess with a person’s psychological health. This is the time when election commercials are doing more harm than good.
Election commercials are significant to show US citizens what different candidates are out there. But we should never take everything we see in these commercials as fact. The hardest part to learn about our politicians is that all of them, whether democratic or republican, will lie to achieve what they want.
