Mandatory Pre-election Calm Period in Civilized Countries: Not in the USA

Italy, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Indonesia, France, Portugal, Spain, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Irland, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Roumania....

Virtually every country on the surface of the earth imposes a "period of silence" anywhere from 24 hours to 5 days before Election Day. Except the US which many consider the Third World of the First World, i.e. at the very bottom. In the US, the harassment, the vitriol, the robocalls, the commercials, the arguments, and the violence continue throughout a very long campaign that usually starts with two years left in the incumbent's term. By the time the new president takes office, it's time to start campaigning for a second term. Even on election day, rancor, verbal and physical abuses surround the voting location.

69 percent of American adults say the 2024 presidential election is a “significant” source of stress in their lives, especially with the criminal, foul and violent language used by Donald Trump. 

The reason why elections in America are anxiogenic is not only because of the uncertainty of the outcome, but because of the process itself. To many outsiders, Americans appear like rats in a laboratory cage surrounded by expert scientists who feed them stuff, test them with new drugs, and analyze their reactions. The American system does indeed infantilize its citizens and treat them as a bunch of morons whose hands have to be held and whose brains have to be taught the basics of life, sort of a captive ignorant audience that is bombarded around the clock with false and misleading information. That is why money and commercials make such a difference in US elections. I cannot imagine how someone, after two years of campaign, cannot yet be sure who to vote for the day before election day, and that a stupid commercial on the eve of election day may change their minds. 

The monetization and commercialization of American elections are crimes against the American people, not to mention the lack of uniformity across all states in the manner voting takes place and the horrid corruption embedded in the farce known as the Electoral College. By imposing fickle intermediaries between the people's vote and the results of the election, the US has opened the door for corruption, cheating and the steal of the people's will.

With Trump on the ballot and his violent threats and haphazard flailings against anyone and anything percevied to be against him, Americans are scared at what life may look like under a new Trump administration. With Harris, people feel less threatened and less insecure, even if they disagree with her on policies, they know she'll fight an honest decent fight unlike Trump. If Trump wins, it's chaos and vengeful policies and moronic decisions (as many of his advisers said during his first term). If he loses, it's also chaos and vengeful swamping of the courts with wasteful objections and false accusations of fraud. Some of Trump's proposed policies actually threaten people’s safety and freedoms.

Unfortunately, we have no mandatory period of silence and calm in the US. Such a break from a long and tense campaign would help voters take stock of the totality of the arguments they've heard and make a calm and deliberate, rather than a hurried and forced, decision. Elections in the US are similar to your American television channels which fire at you like a machinegun violent movies with guns, killings, blood splashing everywhere, unrealistic monsters and superheroes and deafening sounds, all of which followed by a "break" during which you are bombarded with ads telling you what a loser you are for not buying this junk food or not asking your doctor about the dozens of new drugs that are released every day in the market. 

 

I lived long enough in the US to realize what a prisoner the average American is when compared to other countries and cultures. On MSNBC, the cycle consists of 2-3 minutes of news followed by 6 minutes of commercials, with the "news" consisting of previews of what the actual news will be, and the self-promoting commercials telling me how great MSNBC is. Only those Americans who have lived abroad understand the Gulag in which Americans are made to live by giant corporations hiding behind the government of the United Scams of America, the land of the dweeb, the home of the slave. The overwhelming thrust from the communications world in the US is: Keep them stupid, keep them ignorant, tell them to buy noxious products, keep them captive and incapable of thinking freely, because the moment they think freely we lose our business and our profits. That is how a shepherd handles his herd. And Trump is the flagrant caricature of this America: He wants to protect women in spite of themselves!