It’s fitting that America elected a racist gameshow host (once). American elections are a racist gameshow.
Nobody else votes like this. South Korean elections take 23 days. In India the campaign period is roughly a month, though actual voting takes another month (you count a billion votes). In most cases (besides gigantor India), we know the result the same night because projecting a large popular vote count isn’t that hard.
Americans, in contrast, campaign for two years, refresh a map for days if not weeks, and barely even report the popular vote at all. This obviously is a terrible way to run an election. It is however, an amazing TV show.
Think about it.
What if you had a media property that ran for two years, repeated every four, and captured literally the entire market? The 2020 campaign cost $14 billion, most of it plowed into advertising. This show also drives organic eyeballs and dollars in every direction. TV, social media, live events, podcasts, merchandise, the whole shebang. What a terrible, wasteful election for a country full of poor people. But what an amazing show.
That’s what American elections are. A TV show. They’ve figured out how to get the…
