Mar 21, 2024 4 min read

By Nick Jacobs

After being inundated with another full day of news about the candidates for president, I’m exhausted from the petty bickering, finger-pointing, accusations, and madness of it all.

This feels like a reality show with a plot filled with social media-inspired stupidity. We can’t even begin to comprehend the absurdity of the non-issues dominating the political storyline of our amazing country without a little bit of sad recognition about this madness. What’s even worse is the next several months will produce much more of the same. It’s like living “The Truman Show.”

For those of you who aren’t Jim Carrey mainliners, “The Truman Show” was an American psychological comedy-drama that premiered in 1998. It was about a man who grew up living what he believed to be a normal life. All the while, the audience knows it’s a reality television show that is focused solely on him. In fact, like the show “Jury Duty,” where the fake jury is all in on it but the one person who is unaware of the hoax, Carrey’s character is completely clueless. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.

That’s why I’m starting to believe we are all participants in a make-believe dystopian jape where we are the extras in a ridiculous, made-for-television, political reality program that is completely fictional. Only the talking heads, the pundits, the advertisers, the billionaires, and the other foreign countries who want to dominate America are benefitting from it.

My belief is that the whole idea of making each voting district virtually election-proof by manipulating the geographic voting lines was the beginning of the end. I remember when a local U.S. congressional district map was described as an upside-down medieval dragon with parts of its anatomy hanging into West Virginia.

Once we allowed the two parties to create these districts where their representatives were virtually invincible, our politicians were freed from having to work toward compromise. Gerrymandering turned them into royalty, safe in their invincible fiefdoms, waving at us peasants from their ivory towers. It also allowed radical politicians to be elected by a small group of extremists who always showed up for the primaries. Then, if the politicians weren’t extreme enough, their opinion-skewed electors would throw them out for even more exhaustively twisted candidates to take their place.

Now, we’re have two men running for the presidency of the most heavily armed country in the world who are both old white men. Even though the economy is growing, one is being rejected because of ageism, while the other, who has multiple legal cases pending against him, is only a few years younger. It’s a multi-billion-dollar extravaganza about two grandpas attempting to hold onto power.

With Nazis marching in Nashville, protesters from both sides camping in front of politician’s homes, and death threats flying like confetti toward those not choosing to drink the Kool-Aid, we have wingnuts on both sides who could not have been more appropriately chosen if they had gone through auditions for “America’s Most Harebrained.” Much of the squabbling is over issues that could be corrected but aren’t being addressed at all because it’s politically advantageous to leave them broken to be used as political fodder.

Rather than choosing between Presidents Washington and Lincoln, we are being challenged to decide between Eve’s husband, Adam, or Methuselah to run our country. Political functionality is on life support, and the country’s future is in jeopardy. I’m longing for truth, justice, and the American way but will settle for stability and sanity.

This ol’ grandpa’s recommendation? Look deeply into your heart and try very hard to decide what’s real and important and then inject a bit of common sense back into the narrative. Because your vote may be the deciding vote in this swing state of Pennsylvania. It may be the most important election decision of your adult life.

Nick Jacobs is a Windber resident.