America – how many of you out here really, truly, in your heart of hearts, absolutely want either Joe Biden or Donald Trump as your next president?
Every four years we are told that “this is the most important election of our lifetime.” Maybe that’s right. But what if you know exactly what you’re going to get, and you don’t want it either way?
We (many of us) want the ideologies. But the actual people themselves? You will be hard-pressed to find more than a small minority who are genuinely and hopelessly devoted.
We run a lot of election-related news stories on Hedgehog and there’s a pretty common thread – how fed up people are with their choices. How much they wish they had better options. How bewildered they are that this is where we’ve ended up.
We can do better, can’t we?
We must ask ourselves, can we do better? And if we don’t do better for ourselves, who will for us?
America tried out Trump, tried out Biden, and most people aren’t any happier with the state of the world today than they were eight years ago. Neither one brought the American people together either. Trump averaged a 41% approval rating in Gallup polls during his presidency, and Biden was at 43% overall as of Gallup’s January poll. Not exciting numbers.
Litanies aside, we’re sitting at home watching this year’s election feeling exhausted and not really knowing what to do about it. Another year of “debates” filled with name-calling and trash-talking feels embarrassing. Even online outrage lacks real sincerity – we’re not actually angry, we’re performing angry because it’s what people expect us to do. We have all seen this movie before and it is not interesting anymore.
We must ask ourselves, can we do better? And if we don’t do better for ourselves, who will for us? Newsrooms are disappearing by the day. Journalism is as polarized as it’s ever been, and trust is at historical lows.
We can’t rely on Washington insiders to write our news headlines for us. Neither one of these two candidates is going to bring people together.
We need to do something, look at our products differently, change the way we’re engaging with audiences and offer solutions instead of grievances, alternatives instead of acceptance.
What we need to do is talk to each other, in a productive way. Recognize that other people aren’t bad just because they disagree with our points of view.
Fixing what’s wrong requires common ground, and a willingness to talk to each other openly and honestly and find those places where we can agree on a better path forward.
I am planning to do things differently this year and lead by example in my conversations on Hedgehog, and we hope others will do the same. Whether it’s our platform or someone else’s, the good of the country depends on us solving our problems together, rather than going to our corners, digging in our heels and throwing the same unappealing solutions at the problem every four years.
Because frankly, I think Americans are tired of this.
