
By Evelyn Fernandez-Jarvis, Deputy Editor-in-Chief
05.11.24
This is a date that will go down in history. This is the day that the 47th president was introduced to the world. After a long wait of campaigning we finally got to see state by state whether they would go blue or red.
I am sure like a lot of people that we were all anticipating the announcement of the new president of the United States. On the 5th of November I was staring at my laptop watching the American map turn blue or red. This feeling of not knowing what would happen was excruciatingly long, and yet at the same time the result felt already known. At some point in the night I closed my laptop knowing that the election had clearly been won. Now confirmed that the 47th president will be Donald Trump.
The campaigning alone for this one election was quite the experience to live through. This political campaign alone cost $15.1 billion, which is an extortionate amount to spend. When looking at the election and seeing it through a screen the question of: What has happened to politics? Kept coming to mind, has it turned toxic? My immediate answer was YES. In 2024, to say that it felt as though politics has taken a turn into something toxic is a tough pill to swallow, as a young person today, it is quite daunting. Mainly because it is known that all politics is personal, no matter what anyone says, our politics across the world affects us all.
The first step that made me start to fully digest how toxic politics had become started in summer.
On July 13th Trump ended up having an attempted assassination attempt whilst at a rally in the swing state of Pennsylvania. Whilst I personally do not in any way support Donald Trump as a person or his politics, it was still a shock to see that there had been an attempted assassination attempt whilst he was expressing his side of the argument.
This extreme action directly showed how deeply the emotions that come from politics are and the feelings that can come from this can be dangerous. So where does that leave us?
This drastic event was truly a turning point in the election, it showed the American people and the eyes overseas looking in that people were willing to kill in order to get the political outcome that they desire the most.
For me personally, I found the outcome of the election showed that even with the most public, or popular people endorsing a political figure, if people do not believe that they personally can have a better life, this action of endorsement does not matter or even have an effect. This was shown when looking at Kamala Harris’s campaign, with key figures like Beyonce and Taylor Swift coming out and wanting others to vote democrat. However, when looking at interviews it was clear that people were willing to ignore basic principles like morals in the race, if they were able to live paying less in Trump’s presidency. Is this okay?
I guess this then goes into opinion and something that you would have to reach a conclusion on your own.
When looking specifically at endorsement on the republican side of the argument we saw less popularity and more powerful people who can use money as a big political motivator. This was officially introduced with Elon Musk and his personal endorsement for trump.
However, it is also abundantly clear that key figures in American society that play big roles have a key influence, this was shown when Elon Musk endorsed trump. For the Richest person in the world to state a political preference made me personally, very uneasy.
When I tried to dissect this feeling it led to the conclusion of knowing how much money dictates politics already, with committees of Super Pacs showing particular interest with political parties when wanting to achieve an outcome. To go even further, this impact of money deflects from a truly democratic process and takes away from the people who are navigating the right person to vote for if their feed of media is taken over by one person or one party.
This definitive difference of media was so abundantly clear in this election, with Trump being an overarching presence on X (Twitter) and Kamala Harris taking more precedence over TikTok. Whilst I can appreciate how important social media is when looking at connecting with people easily today and sharing what your party has to offer, this blend of politics and social media can be dangerous. We can see how the lines of fact and fiction are easily blurred and can spread so quickly on a social media site. On top of this the ease of which it is to access and publish hate speech is so easy on social media and can fuel this political hatred that I believe was so clear in this specific election.
After the outcome of the election, I am sure that many of us watched the video of a 26 year old Nick Fuentes speaking directly about women and having autonomy over their bodies. This hate speech created rage and upset across social media and we can see that this gained so much traction mainly because of social media, but the main issue with this is that it isn’t free speech, it is specifically sharing content with the knowledge that it would upset or target a specific group of people.
After coming to terms with the result and the election campaign, for me anyway, I think it is clear that a change in politics is needed, but the real question is what is the next step to making this happen?
Image: Rosemary Ketchum via Pexels