Illustration by Timothy Gonzales
By Rin Lamy, Delta College Student Submission
Deciding who to vote for is not an easy decision, and I am not here to make it easier. I am not going to tell you who to vote for or who to dislike. What I do want to show is that deciding who to vote for cannot be answered by listening to political ads or campaigning platforms. Both major party candidates have tons of funding and lots of resources to be able to present a carefully crafted campaign to the public. These politicians want to win, and they have a whole team of people behind them deciding how to spin the truth, what they can make up and more. The lies that I picked below are the ones I have seen the most and make me yell at the TV every time it comes on.
Kamala Harris Never Worked at McDonalds (probably)
I’m sure that we have all seen the campaign ad that was released on August 10, 2024 where she claimed to have worked at McDonalds in an attempt to ingratiate herself with the middle class. However, there is no evidence aside from what she and her campaign has said, that she ever worked at McDonalds at all. There are no pictures, no testimony from past coworkers and McDonalds themselves have never confirmed her employment. It is not often that the lack of information is news, but as someone who still has paystubs from every job I ever worked, I would like to see some proof of this.
Most of the political campaign lies or “misinformation” will be along the lines of what seems like a white lie. It is not even the candidate that is telling the lies, but a team of people working behind them that decide what voters want to hear and what qualities or deeds the candidate has that they can spin to show prospective voters that this candidate has it. It was decided by the Harris-Walz campaign that they need the middle-class vote. So the focus has been to show how Harris is “of the people, for the people,” and if you can’t prove it is false it must be fair game, right?
Donald Trump Lies About A lot
I like to think of Donald Trump as that one friend we have that is mostly harmless, but fun at parties because their stories are always so ridiculous it’s fun, but we know they’re also full of nonsense. Then we get older, and we realize that they were a terrible friend, and what does it say about us if we just kept them around for our own entertainment?
Most of what Trump says is a twist of the truth, but it can have dire consequences for the people it is about. It is hard to pick just one thing because most of what he says is false, or misconstrued. He denied relations with a woman that he’s been proved to have associated with during a national debate, he started a riot after convincing his supporters the election was rigged (and denied that too), and recently he is instigating a lot of animosity towards immigrants by claiming that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio are here illegally, as well as other claims.
The style of the falsities is really the concern. Unlike Kamala Harris, Trump doesn’t seem to lie to make potential voters think he’s more like them. It seems he lies to make people angry, and it is usually to direct this anger at another group and get everyone mad that it’s all this other group’s fault that all these bad things are happening and if you elect him, he can make it all better. People who are controlled by fear are dangerous because fear can take away our ability to think rationally, and perhaps often act prematurely. It’s important to look into who you think your enemy might be before blindly acting on someone else’s opinion.
The Bottom Line
The bottom line is that before you climb on a podium or pick up a pitchfork, do your own research on what you are mad about. You can’t trust your friends to tell you what to think, or your neighbors, or the news. You need to look for your own sources and evaluate the facts for yourself. Much of the reason that our nation is in the mess that it is in is because we have become a nation of sheep led by a pack of dodo’s. This is supposed to be a nation for the people by the people, and we are doing ourselves a disservice if we are not all doing our own research and bringing all our individual viewpoints to the table.
