You didn’t read that title incorrectly, unfortunately – this isn’t some article mix-up between the MLB playoffs and the presidential election. Today, we find ourselves once again as politically engaged viewers during this election cycle, reaching a moment of pinching ourselves to wonder, could this be the democratic reality of the election of the leader of the free world? And, once again, we must shamefully answer, yes to what the international political sphere can only look at with the same wonder that the sane bipartisan critics of this cycle may also observe it with.
Donald Trump in a speech this weekend has called for the mandatory drug testing of both candidates before the next debate, making incendiary claims that Hillary must have been involved with the same level of steroid use employed by professional athletes, due to her energy in the beginning followed by what he cited as a precipitous decline in her enthusiasm by the debate’s end. This, he has decisively done as an extrapolation of the earlier commentary on her waning health during a fainting incident earlier in the general election cycle.
The very principle of veritable compromise and the notion of legitimacy garnered only by respect for other side, rather than fear of a failed United States government, is the core understanding that has lent longevity to the American political system. Yet, when candidates refuse to answer even basic policy questions, avoided by churlish circumvention, we end up with statements like this – propositions like, I don’t know, suggesting that a nominated official of a major party would take steroids to prep for a Town Hall (please let me know the rationale behind taking steroids for an intellectual and verbal task, anyway) that entirely undermine the values of democracy and threaten the further deterioration of the spirit of compromise innate and crucial to American elections.
Yes, elections have been uncivil before – but the line between incivility and completely unfounded accusations meant to be used as distractors from lack of actual political and policy knowledge transcends any precedent of argumentative elections.
When, we may all find ourselves asking, will this insanity be over? I can only pray to whatever higher power there is that it ends with Election Day.
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