Anxiety and the Presidential Election

Wow. Could the mainstream media do anything more to raise our anxiety levels about the 2024 election? And diminish or negate all the recent accomplishments in our country?

Over the past three-and-a-half years, our nation’s economy has been the strongest in the world. Unemployment is at record lows, and the stock market is at record highs. NATO – which last came together to defend the United States in the aftermath of 9/11 – is stronger than ever. Border crossings are down. Massive infrastructure improvements are underway in every state. Prescription drug costs are lower. We finally got out of Afghanistan – evacuating more than 100,000 U.S. citizens and supporters – with just a handful of deaths. Inflation – which rose precipitously in the aftermath of the pandemic – has come back down, and prices in many areas have even begun to decline. And yet, all the media commentators can talk about these days – and they are not “reporters” when they are clearly offering opinions to frame the election – are President Biden’s age and verbal lapses. Let me be clear. I like Biden. And I am not a Donald Trump fan. He tends toward narcissistic fascist imperialism – pretty much what brought on World War II. I fear that he would settle the war in Ukraine by handing significant parts of it to Russia and destabilizing NATO. He worries me with his affection for autocratic dictators like Putin and Kim Jong Un. He also shows evidence of unbridled rage toward so many people in our country – immigrants, veterans, civil servants, people with substance use disorders and mental illnesses, democratic thinkers from both parties, women, and children. And, oh yeah, he is a convicted criminal, was found liable for sexual assault, and comes across as a cult-leading antichrist. These are not things I – or most Americans – support. So why are the media ignoring our concerns and so intent on cutting off Biden at the knees – and leading us the direction of four years of what they uniformly describe as at best chaos and at worst the disintegration of American society? I don’t get it. And for that reason, my anxiety levels are sky-high today. Not because I believe that Joe Biden can’t possibly beat Trump again. After all, he’s up two points in one poll today, was even in another one yesterday, and the website FiveThirtyEight suggests that if the election were held today, Biden is slightly more likely than Trump to win. And this is after two straight weeks of piling on by MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, and a whole bunch of others who should know better. A piling on that has dragged wimpy democrats – including 77-year-old Lloyd Doggett and 58-year-old Jim Himes, both of whom I used to admire and neither of whom is a spring chicken – to call for Biden to leave the race because of his age. For many of us, it feels like we have gone through the looking glass this year. And it feels like – in the words of the famous poet – “the center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” I am a mental health voter. I vote in part because voting is an empowering action for me. It helps to preserve my own mental health. It gives me a modicum of control over my environment. For me, that includes supporting others who support mental health (Biden, by the way, has put more new resources into mental health promotion than any President in recent times), watch budgets carefully, invest in clean energy, protect access to all forms of health care, want to improve education, are pro-life from birth to death, and reduce racism and bigotry. Meanwhile, others were drawn to Donald Trump (and Bernie Sanders, for that matter) because they stood up to both mainstream media and mainstream politicians. They want to be listened to, not lectured at. Mainstream politicians and media think that Biden is the problem right now. In fact, he may be the only solution. These thoughts are my own. Feel free leave a comment or email me at gionfriddopaul@gmail.com with your own thoughts and reactions.