Every 4 years a US presidential election comes around, and each an every time all of the potential presidential candidates stand on that stage for the US electoral debates.
Everyone looks very professional, in their little suits and their cute little red and blue ties. They stand behind their podiums, gesture towards each other and make digs at each other.
One politician comes up with a nice “zinger” that really hits his opponent’s ego hard. It goes viral all over the internet and the American public cheer along, happy that their candidate one-upped their opponent.
And every 4 years I’m waiting for the American public to finally realise that their election debates are a complete sham from top to bottom. Every 4 years the American people watch a giant lie play out right in front of their face and do nothing about it.
The TV election debates are not free and open debates where anything can be discussed. Instead, they’re tightly controlled environments whereby the “debates” are strictly limited to an incredibly small number of topics.
Trust me. You won’t believe how deep the corruption goes.
The League of Women Voters
You see, US election debates were originally established by a group called The League of Women Voters. This was a non-partisan group with the goal of creating free and open debates between presidential candidates, in-front of television cameras, so that the American people could get a real sense for exactly who they were voting for.
The League of Women Voters had no ties to any particular political parties and no ties to giant corporations. They were the perfect, impartial sponsor of the US election debates.
Then, in 1988, both the Republicans and the Democrats started making conditions for joining the debates. Here are some of the demands they made:
- They wanted decide what the TV cameras showed.
- The press had to be in the last 2 rows, at the back of the seating areas.
- They wanted choose who was in the audience.
- They wanted decide who will ask the questions and how they will be asked.
Fed up with their incessant demands, The League of Women Voters stepped down from the position of sponsoring US electoral debates.
“In 1988, the League of Women Voters withdrew its sponsorship of the presidential debates after the George H. W. Bush and Michael Dukakis campaigns secretly agreed to a “memorandum of understanding” that would decide which candidates could participate in the debates, which individuals would be panelists (and therefore able to ask questions), and the height of the lecterns”. — This Wikipedia Page
Upon leaving, The League left a quote that should be known to every single American: “”We have no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public”
And ever since The League of Women stepped down as the sponsor for US Electoral Debates, the American public has been hoodwinked in exactly the way that The League feared.
The State of US Electoral Debates Today
In the Leagues absence, The Commission on Presidential Debates was formed to take control over how the TV debates are run.
Today, US Electoral Debates are tightly controlled environments:
- The audience submits their questions beforehand and the questions are carefully chosen.
- Audience members are allowed to ask one question and then their microphones will be switched off. If the audience attempts to make a question other than the one agreed upon beforehand, their microphone will be abruptly switched off.
- Audience members are chosen (usually the audience is made up of the wealthy donor class, and not ordinary Americans).
- The choice of Moderator is controlled.
- All of the questions asked to each candidate are controlled.
- The positions of the podiums are controlled. (Those placed in the centre of the podiums are more likely to be viewed as “legitimate” candidates compared with those placed at the ends. Being placed at the end may suggest to the audience that this candidate is an “afterthought’ and just added there to make up the numbers for the debate).
You see, the problem with proper live debates is that they’re risky.
- The presidential candidate isn’t able to consult with their advisors and make statements based on market research.
- They have to think of answers on the spot and risk accidently saying something that will damage their reputation in the eyes of the public.
- They aren’t able to present a well-polished version of themselves. Instead, in a live debate the public can get a sense of the true personality of each candidate.
Candidates don’t want to deal with any of that. Particularly for presidential candidates who are already in power, they’d be much happier to avoid live TV debates all together (Just as Joe Biden has attempted to do).
They would much rather have experts carefully craft a perfect image of them and distribute it to the public in a social media post or television ad.
Those pesky live debates hosted by The League of Women Voters were quite the nuisance for powerful people who wanted to carefully control which president was voted into power.
So, they created a plan to control the debates themselves and they very much succeeded in doing so
The Framework of Discussion in Presidential Debates
Have you ever felt as though US election debates were nothing more than a giant waste of time?
Why don’t they ever get down to the really important issues?
Why don’t they ever talk about the root causes behind the country’s deepest problems?
Why does the entire debate seem to come down to a few “hot button” topics that don’t really deal with the biggest problems the country faces? (Abortion, transgender issues, the Ukraine War Etc.)
It’s because the powerful people who run the debates want it that way.
They don’t want the American people discussing or even thinking about topics like:
- Why their healthcare costs so much.
- Why the entirety of their mainstream media is controlled by just 6 giant companies.
- Why they have absolutely no say on which wars their country gets involved with.
- Why nobody seems to be doing anything about the massive homelessness crisis that grows worse every single day.
- Why giant corporations are still able to lobby the government to get what they want.
You see, political issues can be split into 2 categories’: 1. Systemic Issues 2. Transient Issues.
Systemic issues call into question whether the system itself works for the American people or not. Here are some examples of systemic issues:
- Should the way elections are run be changed?
- Should the American people get to vote on whether their country goes to war or not?
- Should Big Pharma be allowed to profit off of people’s suffering?
Transient issues are issues that come and go with the times. Here are some examples of transient issues:
- What a particular politician said in their latest tweet
- A recent tragic event that took place (a mass shooting, a terrorist attack etc.)
- A lie that a particular politician may or may not have said
- A particular tax cut that has been passed
Pay attention to any US Electoral debate today and notice how almost all of the topics of discussion are transient issues and not systemic issues.
Why is that? Well, did you forget?
The Commission on Presidential Debates controls: which questions are asked, who the moderator is, and which audience members are allowed to ask questions.
The tightly-controlled questions are asked. The politicians on stage then answer these tightly-controlled questions. The public discusses the answers to these tightly-controlled questions amongst each other. The answers to the tightly-controlled questions are shared throughout social media.
And at no point along the way have systemic issues been discussed. Not even amongst the watching public.
Americans think that they’re having a lively debate amongst each other when in fact the framework for the debate was chosen for them beforehand.
US electoral debates today are tightly controlled to make sure that the American public does not start discussing ideas that may negatively affect the profits of the giant corporations and powerful interests that run the country.
Every 4 years I see the US Electoral Debates appear on my Youtube feed. And every 4 years I’m waiting for the American people to finally wake up call it out for the gigantic sham that it really is.
Yet every single year I’m disappointed. The American public start shouting amongst themselves.
“My candidate is better because he said X!” one American will say.
“That’s nonsense! My candidate destroyed your candidate!” another American will say.
Never do they seem to notice that the entire debate is a complete sham from the very beginning. Never do they seem to notice that their TV debates, the ones they get so passionate about, are entirely controlled by powerful interests who have been in charge of them since The League of Women Voters left in 1988.
Since I was roughly 24 years old, I’ve looked across the pond from the UK and could see clearly that the US TV election debates were a complete sham. And yet a lot of fully-grown, American adults still seem to be absolutely clueless about this fact.
Americans! Stop letting giant corporations control all of your presidential debates. For the love of God, please wake up and stop buying in.
You don’t need giant corporations to set up your presidential debates anymore. Make them yourselves!
Create your own fair, impartial presidential debates on the internet. Host lesser-known candidates. Give them plenty of time to speak. Don’t let anybody control the questions asked. Don’t let anybody choose who moderates the debate.
Let every single American get to know the true personality of every presidential candidate by forcing them to answer difficult questions on the spot.
US citizens deserve better presidential debates.
As the next US election looms, new presidential debates are going to start appearing on your screen. Are you going to buy in? Or see them for the sham they really are?
