Youth Vote: Oh Just Stay Home
Multiple papers to write at once take up an amazing amount of free time, who knew.
Anyway, this is despicable. Clearly in one of the most engaging and captivating elections in recent memory, going on with the backdrop of an economic landscape that is undergoing unprecedented (again in recent memory) turmoil, the best thing to do would be to create a piece that advocates to intentionally not participate. And it isn’t just the sweeping generalizations that are being pandered to about youth voters that is deplorable (much like those commercials of late that are advocating automatic reduced prices for car insurance for older people because, naturally, old = better driver *sigh*). It’s more the intentional manipulation and intellectual dishonestly being perpetrated to take what were otherwise a relatively normal distribution of results and slanting them to fit their bias. Heck, why even bother interviewing real youths (other than perhaps to embarass them)? Just grab a studio and some actors, it would probably be faster and less easy to fact-check.
I’m liberal in my beliefs, I’m aware of this. And in positions of authority I would like people who are more knowledgeable (or have a group of underlings knowledgable enough to provide fair and broad input) about a given issue or their portfolio than the regular populace/politican has though. But to take it to this extent and apply it to voting:
“Is it elitist to say only some people should do brain surgery?” Caplan said. “The bottom line is, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you are not doing the country a favor by voting.”
Voting is serious business. Democracy works best when people educate themselves. So maybe instead of telling people things like “Rock the Vote,” these groups should say “Rock or Vote.”
Is utterly condescending. Suffrage is universal, has never come with conditions, and people have died to give their countries access to it.
On the plus side, the fact that this is coming up and is transparently a sham is probably going to energize those that see it in the exact opposite direction.
