The United States and its Incapability to be Realistic Essay Example

U.S. citizens have seen many presidential elections over the past centuries and over time those elections have continued to advance. One thing that has not changed is the United States’ two major political sides democrats and republicans. Due to these two sides tending to disagree and argue, the United States has become somewhat divided. As an effect of unreliable news sources, losing trust in elections, and U.S. citizens’ lack of being open-minded, the United States is incapable of dealing with the nation’s threats realistically. 

Fake news has become very common in today’s elections, and when it is believed it can affect voter opinions. According to Jenna Marina Lee in her article “How Fake News Affects U.S. Elections,” fake news does influence our attitudes, our beliefs, and it can also influence our actual behavior. This shows the extent of the effect that fake news can have on one’s ideas and political views. According to Lee “Right before the 2016 election, the top 20 fake news stories that were circulating on social media received more engagement — so that’s liking, sharing, commenting — than the top 20 factual news stories that were on social media.” Meaning fake news at this point had more recognition and more viewers compared to factual news sources. According to Lee, “There was a research study that said undecided voters were more likely to vote for President Trump in the last election if they believed the fake news about Hillary Clinton that they saw on social media.” This study continues to show how fake news can sway a U.S. citizen’s vote. All these factors are caused by unreliable sources being believed which, manipulates one’s view on politics. In hand, this can cause an election to be based on false information. Collectively, this causes the nation and the two major political sides to have opinions that are possibly backed up by unreliable sources. 

Recently it is seen that U.S. citizens have been losing trust in the presidential elections. 

According to Michel Martin in his article “Why Americans are losing trust in elections and the media,” if faith and trust in elections is undermined, a country can become comparable to the foundation of a building crumbling. This shows how important trust in elections truly is for a country and its citizens’’. If there is no trust in ballots and elections, it leads to a country falling into a state of division. According to Martin, “And so when we asked people about confidence that their ballot was counted, we see higher levels of trust in that than people do about ballots around the country, for example.” The lack of trust in federal elections is shown to be a present issue happening for many U.S. citizens. According to Alexa Lardieri in her article “Majority of Americans Don’t Trust Elections, Poll Finds,” 59% of U.S. citizens do not have confidence in the honesty of elections. This number is a majority of voters in the United States. This magnifies the seriousness of distrust in U.S. presidential elections. The extent of mistrust in presidential elections leads to mistrust in the United States as a whole. U.S. citizens cannot fully believe that ballots were counted correctly therefore, they don’t know if the president elected truly is supposed to be there. Therefore, the United States could lack the support for decisions a president makes.

Voters can sometimes be close-minded when it comes to their political views and opinions. According to an article for eureporter “Gallup poll says Americans ‘close-minded’ on information sources,” individuals are looking for sources that will confirm what they already believe and avoid those that don’t justify their beliefs.  This leads to a lack of knowing all sides of a story which leads to an inability to have a realistic and reasonable opinion. According to eureporters article “Gallup poll says Americans ‘close-minded’ on information sources”, “In other words: 69/29, or 2.38 times, as many Americans are closed-minded (prejudiced) regarding information-sources which don’t fit their ideology, then are not. Not to see the opposite side’s viewpoint is to be blind to it, and thus to become locked into whatever one believes.” This confirms the idea that U.S. citizens tend to read what they like and avoid things that might disagree with their opinions or prove them wrong. This lack of being open-minded leads to an extreme bias between the two major political sides. 

Overall, there are a lot of factors that cause the United States to be incapable of handling threats made to the nation reasonably. Trust in elections, unreliable sources, and voters being closed-minded all impact the way the United States political system works. To work towards a less divided country, there needs to be an effort from both major political sides to apply reform.