The stupidest Presidential campaign in American history.
While Putin schemes and the world burns from climate change, the candidates are talking about eating house pets and working at McDonald's. What gives?
We’ve still got more than a month to go before the 2024 U.S. Presidential election, and it’s already clear that it will go down in history for a number of things. But one characteristic stands out to me that may not get a lot of play in the history books: it’s turned out to be quite possibly the stupidest campaign season in American history, characterized by “issues” and narratives that, in decades future, may serve to embarrass those of us who lived through it in 2024. Indeed, future historians may look back on what was in the news and on our social media feeds in the run-up to the 2024 election and scoff, “What the hell were those people thinking?”
Look at the picture that’s the header image of this article. This badly-photoshopped pastiche reimagines various right-wing personalities and Trump sycophants as literal superheroes, with Trump himself, of course, as the central figure. This is not just visual fanfic posted by some bored Trump supporter. This image was circulated by the candidate himself, a man who once served as President of the United States and wants (or thinks he wants) to be reelected to that office. It would be one thing if Trump circulated the image ironically or with a bit of self-deprecating humor. But that’s not it. As we all know, Trump is utterly humorless. His idea of “humor” is usually an insulting attack on somebody he doesn’t like, such as calling Rosie O’Donnell a fat pig. He doesn’t make jokes. He means this absolutely literally: vote for me because I’m a superhero.
