We all know that in 48 hours millions of Americans will head to the polls to elect our next President. We all know this election is important. We all know this election boils down to choosing polar opposites. We all know that our country is divided. However, with all of this knowledge, I am guessing that many Americans feel how I do, we all can’t wait for Thursday, November 10th.
By Thursday morning, the election will be mostly wrapped up. We will have our president, our senators, representatives and the like. The chaos and dust of proposition voting and tight contests should be mostly ironed out. Furthermore, we will also be finished with the post-election nonsense that will plague our social media, our news channels, and even ESPN.
This election, like many before it has become the focal point of our lives. For example, I am an old soul and love the morning paper; however, the paper has been dramatically dominated by countless political adds, political opinions, political satire, political recipes and everything else in between.
The reason for this election focus is simply that the American Political system is important based on our country’s major global influence. Furthermore, this election is especially polarized; thus, there will seemingly be a drastic winning and losing side. However, there are countless other global issues that have fallen onto the backburner (or even off the metaphorical stove) due to the incessant election coverage.
It has been many days since I have seen non-politically induced news coverage of the Islamic extremist group ISIS. Granted, Iraqi and US forces are fighting with ISIS in Mosul, but what is happening in Syria? What is happening with the Kurds? What is Assad been up to?
Why have such major global issues been removed from the spotlight?
Let’s turn our attention to Africa. The media and news have completely stopped covering the search for the Chibok girls that were kidnapped by Boko Haram. Little to no coverage is being placed on the migrant issue even though we hear that over 4000 have died so far in 2016 while attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea alone.
I could list global issues by the millions with emphasis on individual countries, continents or cities; however, such a practice would be counterproductive. This blog post is not to create awareness of the plethora of global issues, but rather heighten awareness of the non-existent news coverage due to the media blackout caused by the hyper-focus on the election.
This hyper-focus can be boiled down to a game of chess. The good players see the board, while the bad players see only one move. The good players see how the next move will fit into the grand plan, while the bad players are still focused on the same move from the previous sentence. Our over emphasis on the 2016 election is just one piece of the global chess game; thus, even as the queen is moving, we must understand how the pawns, knights, rooks and the sort are responding, reacting, and readying.
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