Reuters: Young Americans are so dissatisfied with the options in the US presidential election that nearly one in four would rather have a giant meteor destroy the Earth than see Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in the White House.
The tongue-in-cheek question was intended to gauge young Americans’ level of unhappiness about their choices in the 8 November election, said Joshua Dyck, co-director of UMass Lowell’s Center for Public Opinion which conducted the poll alongside Odyssey Millennials.
The choice alluded to the Twitter hashtag “#GiantMeteor2016”, a reference to an imaginary presidential candidate.
Some 53% of the 1,247 people aged 18 to 35 said they would prefer to see a meteor destroy the world than have Republican Trump in the Oval Office, with some 34% preferring planetary annihilation to seeing the Democratic former secretary of state win.
Some 39% said they would prefer that Barack Obama declare himself president for life than hand over power to Clinton or Trump, with 26% saying the nation would do better to select its next leader in a random lottery.
Some 23%, nearly one in four, preferred the giant meteor outcome to either Trump or Clinton.
The Giant Meteor 2016 movement, also known as Sweet Meteor O' Death or #SMOD16, began as a joke by those unhappy with their presidential choices.
The Twitter account now boasts more than 20,000 followers. You can even get a bumper sticker.
In other News:
- The Guardian (Dave Schilling) 10.02.2016:
Junk the system: why young Americans won’t do as they’re told this election
- The Intercept (Glenn Greenwald) 06.25.2016:
Brexit Is Only the Latest Proof of the Insularity and Failure of Western Establishment Institutions
It is not only young Americans. I and the small circle of my friends, all of us nearing 50, all professionals, are also dissatisfied with the choices we have in the the 2 party system. I, personally, am also dismayed at Sanders' betrayal of the principles with which he attracted us.
ReplyDeleteEver have the feeling that the News Media abroad, just out of blind luck, or maybe just simply because they are looking at things from a greater distance, sometimes have a better grasp of American politics than we generally do here at home?
ReplyDeleteCase in point, this commentary, back in 2014, already; on the cover of the Taz, in Berlin:
I quote:
"The Democrats do not have a political agenda for which they dare to fight. By doing nothing they offend their own supporters."
And:
"They do not lead the public opinion into a more progressive direction, but rather have been consistently turning to the right... Nobody needs such Democrats."
The analysis piece ends by saying there won’t be real political reforms "of the 21st century in the USA in the near future."
I believe it.
I think HRC already made it abundantly clear that she's the candidate of the Status Quo.
(If there are any reform, under an HRC presidency, those will be reforms that will push the country further to the right, like possibly a reform of Social Security.)
This is the same newspaper that was criticized in 2008 for running (quite provocatively, but also quite presciently so, imho) a front page with a picture of the White House and the headline: "Uncle Barack’s Cabin?"
The paper then published a point-counterpoint on whether this was racist.
This takes guts. And the ability to challenge the censorship (and self imposed censorship) of established groupthink and entrenched partisan orthodoxies.
A thing that has become increasingly difficult for progressives to do in this country ever since the take over of the DNC by the New Democrats (aka Centrist Democrats and/or Clinton Democrats).
While mind control has often been an important theme of Sci-Fi, and political candidates, of one kind or the other, might have been smeared, now and then, as a Manchurian Candidate (from Richard Condon's eponymous political thriller), nothing is more pervasive, however, or have become closer to our daily reality, than the Sci-Fi subgenre of "corporate mind control", in which a future society is run by one or more business corporations which dominate society using advertising and mass media to control the population's thoughts and feelings.