The presidential elections that recently took place demonstrated national embarrassments no matter what side of the political spectrum you are on. These poor showings of political competence are going to have consequences far worse than memes about a fly in our vice president’s hair.  

The debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden did everything but include the information about the political ideals and plans for the country that each president was supposed to disclose. The public did not debate on what each political candidate had to say, but instead, which candidate was more disrespectful. The fact of the matter is that both candidates disgraced the positions they hold as potential leaders of this country. Instead of showing respect to their political differences, both men decided to talk over each other and even spew insults. The current president of the United States made fun of no one showing up to the former vice president’s rallies. The former vice president told the president to shut up and called him a clown. Disgraceful. The memes are great, though.  

The vice presidential debate was better in terms of informational content, however, there was still a lot of disrespect between the two candidates that caught the eyes of viewers. The current Vice President, Mike Pence, did not let the current Senator of California, Kamala Harris, finish her sentences while she, in turn made distasteful faces at the comments that he made. This debate brought about two different, sad truths about this country: he fact being that the administration continues to disregard and dispute the idea of systematic racism and the other fact being that women, especially women of color, will be criticized for doing much less than their male counterpart. The fly was priceless, though.  

Both debates bring about a catastrophic impact on voters in this country, especially young voters. The youth make up the biggest part of the population in the U.S. but have the lowest voting rates of all the age groups. We let others decide our future for us. Who can blame them this time? For many teenagers about to be able to vote, this may be the first time they ever paid good attention to politics. What do they see? There are potential presidents and vice presidents bickering and throwing insults without actually providing sound information for them to make their very important decision on. For young already non-voters, this just solidifies their incorrect argument that their vote, or voting in general does not matter.  

This is a huge blow to the youth considering that it is our future that these current political candidates are going to impact the most. We pass up the opportunity to use our voices and fight for what wewant in legislation. Despite the huge urge to ditch voting that either or both candidates may have caused, it is vital now more than ever that the youth pick up a sense of political awareness and accountability. This is vital because our current candidates refuse to do so themselves.