But it didn’t happen. Things went back to normal. Three years later, a bitter presidential campaign driven by ugly attack ads and even uglier social media activity culminated on Jan. 6 in what once would have been unthinkable, the breach of the Capitol.
Longtime problem
This didn’t start with the 2020 election. It has been years in the making. Whether you voted for Donald Trump or Joe Biden, don’t think this goes away because Trump is no longer in office. This was already in motion long before Trump came on the scene; and unless the system changes, it will continue to deteriorate and become even more dangerous.
I don’t know why anyone should be surprised. When anger is the drug of choice in politics, when it takes a bigger and bigger hit to grab eyeballs and get attention, where else would we end up?
Voters are constantly being fed a diet of unhealthy content from a variety of sources — politicians, pundits, social media, Hollywood, campaign ads — and the news media perpetuates it all. And they all blame someone else for the country’s angry political environment that is becoming a threat to democracy.
The political consulting community, which produces the negative strategies and ads that are driving this division, need to look in a mirror and take stock of what they’ve done to the country. For decades, political ads from both sides have been designed to stoke emotion and anger and make money for those who produce them, whether they are effective or not. Just look at the millions of dollars in negative ads lobbed by Democratic consultants at Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins. This was followed by Republican consultants’ negative ads against Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in the Georgia Senate runoffs resulting in Democrats gaining the majority in the chamber.
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February 10, 2021 at 06:05PM
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Anger has been the drug of choice for our political system for too long - Roll Call
"choice" - Google News
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