Three Things That Make This Election Cycle Surreal

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What makes this election year so strange is a greater shift away from reality. The election seems like a show, not a civic duty. Candidates are more like actors than future public servants. It all seems so staged. Everything is choreographed to improve poll numbers and ignore issues.

However, the main reason things are surreal is that the debate is no longer about issues; it is all about image. Principles mean nothing, and emotions count for everything.

The One Thing That Matters

At the center of the election is a plotline. One thing and one thing only drives this election—maintaining an enduring narrative.

Both parties need to represent the narrative of the apple pie, hometown, hard-working, family-loving, happiness-seeking, freedom-obsessed American dream of yesteryear. The winner will be whoever best projects this image.

This dream alone holds the attention of the electorate. Each side has long presented its interpretation of this narrative. Liberals are more oriented toward a version favoring unbridled freedom, while conservatives tend toward order. But this narrative lies at the core of the election.

Voters will elect those who promise to keep what is left of this dream alive for a few more years. Anyone perceived as endangering this order will be punished at the polls.

Why 2024 Is Different

What makes 2024 so different, and therefore so surreal, is the dominance of the image over anything else. It is not about rational debate anymore; it has degenerated into the powerful sentiments, feelings, and emotions that best express this narrative, the truth and facts notwithstanding.

The use of images over principles is better suited to the postmodern, post-truth world. Images have the advantage of not needing to be connected to reality. Candidates are free to explore the limits of contradiction and indulge in fantasy when presenting their programs. That is what they are now doing.

Scrambled Messages

Indeed, this year’s image-driven elections have lost any consistent wholeness. The messages and platforms of the two parties are scrambled and mystifying.

The two conventions were dazzling displays of contradiction, grandstanding, and fantasy where everything was possible and nothing was certain.

The Democrats Rely on Image

Thus, the 2024 elections are surreal for three reasons.

The first reason involves the Democrats. They presented a platform with the most radical proposals—abortion on demand, the LGBTQ agenda, socialist economics, porno-indoctrination in the schools, and radical feminism. They have long held these positions, but each election cycle gets more radical and absurd.

However, this year, the party proposed this radical program while embracing the more nostalgic version of the American narrative with all its imagery, metaphors, and messaging. At its convention, there were warm and fuzzy displays of family emotion, patriotism, working-class solidarity, sports metaphors, strong border talk, and even support for police.

These are the people who reject the traditional apple-pie narrative in favor of pot brownies. They prefer to identify by pronouns rather than by pro-family sentiments. This is the party of the wealthy liberal technocrats, establishment figures, and celebrities that are now masquerading as common folk… like those in fly-over America.

Gone were the radical Jacobin symbols of revolution displayed in the 2020 “Summer of Love” riots. They even ignored the embarrassing Gaza protesters who gathered in Chicago to spoil the party. For this party of the liberal establishment, the convention was all about helping working-class Americans survive inflation and the creation of an “opportunity economy.” Do not ask for details; just celebrate the “joy” of the occasion.

From this explosive contradiction, the most absurd things came forth. Family vibes live together with a Planned Parenthood bus offering free abortions and vasectomies. A football coach sees no problem with “transgendered” men inserted into women’s programs. Talk of helping the workers was mixed with plans for imposing socialist-style price controls upon the economy.

The Democrats affirm a program that will undermine this narrative they call their own as it embarks on this journey into the surreal.

The Republican Omission

The second surreal feeling comes from the behavior of the Republicans as they present their narrative.

Their platform tragically ejected the issues and principles that anchor the American apple-pie narrative. The pro-life positions, traditional family affirmations, moral values, and repeated mentions of God were absent.

Although the Republicans failed to act on many of these platform planks in the past, the existence of these goals at least tied their program to reality. The old platform still represented the party’s most ardent grassroots supporters, whose brand of social conservativism has saved and sustained the party for decades.

By discarding these values, the Republicans became as untethered as the Democrats. The social conservatives could be thrown under the bus. Without these bothersome restrictions, they could then explore the path to contradiction and absurdity. Thus, the Republicans at their convention felt free to present a porn star, a pagan prayer leader and pro-homosexual speakers.* Anything is possible once the moral element is taken away.

As the party officially abandons moral values, it is focusing on working-class issues like inflation, taxes, jobs and the border. These are important issues but not the stuff that builds vibrant movements.

The Republican version of the narrative is now severed from its roots in family, country, and faith. Thus, the party joins the Democrats in a campaign immersed in image and detached from the everyday reality of voters.

An Ideal that No Longer Exists

Yet another surreal factor enters into this election cycle that surpasses all others.

Both parties depend upon keeping their version of the narrative of the American dream model alive. However, both fail to admit that the general narrative no longer exists as they imagine it.

They both act as if millions of American families live normal lives with stable marriages inside vibrant communities. This fantasyland is more in line with Norman Rockwell and Cracker Barrel themes than the reality of mass anxiety, fentanyl-riddled private lives, divorce, and loneliness that afflicts so many Americans.

The parties exploit this nostalgic image that survives in the imagination of countless Americans who see it as a way to return to happier times. However, it no longer reflects them.

Most citizens live the tragedy of an America that has become a land of broken families, shattered communities, and empty churches. They must deal with the drugs, sexual immorality, and unbridled passions that spare no family or community.

A Refusal to Address the Real Problem

These are moral, not economic, problems. The political parties refuse to address the essential moral issues at the root of existential problems about the meaning of life. They prefer to reduce everything to economic terms. All is centered upon individual benefits, jobs and self-interest, not the reconstitution of a moral order.

That is why this surreal vision will fail. Materialist expectations will always frustrate souls made for a spiritual end in God. Any restoration of order can only be built upon the moral framework of traditional values that the radical left looks upon with white-hot hatred. It rests upon the planks of the platform the Republican Party just abandoned. It depends upon a God Who must be invoked with ardent sincerity, for the impending tragedy is beyond the capacity of human hands to resolve.

It is time to leave the surreal and return to an order corresponding to reality.

*”GOP surrenders to some of the greatest evils known to man at its convention,” LifeSiteNews, July 16, 2024.

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The featured image is courtesy of Pixabay.