TRUTH: And How it Impacted Our Election

Photo Credit: Al Drago/Getty Images

For several months, a shadowy figure loomed before us. It was shrouded in mystery and fear, its form incapable of being divined by polls or by guesswork, and it crept closer with every passing day.

This figure was, of course, none other than the 2024 election — an American spectacle that many argued would decide not only the fate of our democracy but also how we perceive truth. The dread surrounding a democratic demise seemed hardly unsubstantiated, given the highly unusual circumstances which molded this election into the specter we drew our eyes away from. However, looking back, I find that what was truly terrifying during our election cycle was not merely the peculiarity of our candidates, whose nominations were dually considered undemocratic, but rather the curious flexibility of the truth.

In previous elections, our truths were not a matter of debate. Policy, of course, was contested,  but the facts which made up the fabric of our lives, embroidered neatly into our country’s existence, were never so easily rent to pieces.

This election, however, was different. Falsehoods were casually strewn out and easily shoved out of sight, like dirty laundry thrown into the closet. Lying to the public was simply not career-ending anymore.

Just take a look at J.D. Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, and his notorious commentary during the debate. While speaking about Haitian migrants, Vance repeated an unsubstantiated claim he has made numerous times that migrants were consuming pets in Springfield, Ohio, which prompted the CBS moderators to step in to clarify. One of the moderators began to explain that the Haitian migrants living in Ohio are predominantly legal immigrants, when Vance interrupted and snapped that they had said they “wouldn’t fact-check.”

A remark of this nature hints at a sinister intention by the vice presidential candidate to deliberately deceive the public, coupled with an awareness that the statements he was making were false. Given the subject matter at hand, this behavior is particularly egregious. It doesn’t serve much purpose to reiterate what countless others have already written on the issue, but unfairly targeting and attacking an ethnic minority from the pulpit of a major party ticket is not only unethical, but indicative of how far our society’s tolerance for injustice has stretched.

This is just one instance of lies dominating the rhetoric in this election cycle. Another exceedingly dangerous colony of lies emerges regularly from Donald Trump, a swarm of falsehoods intended to sow doubt in electoral institutions and systems. Among other equally fallacious assertions, Trump claimed prior to the election that illegal immigrants would be voting, that early voting is fraudulent, and that absentee voters would not get their IDs checked.

While Vance, the soon-to-be vice president, focused his lies on underrepresented minorities in the hopes of weaponizing racial tension to raise conservative turnout, Trump attempted more to provoke uncertainty about the validity of the election–which is quite ironic, given his victory. Both set dangerous precedents, but the implications of the Trumpian election fraud claims are decidedly more toxic to the continued survival of democracy. If voters do not believe in the results of an election, they will lose faith in the government as a whole, creating fertile ground for authoritarianism — which can easily spring from the ashes of such a blaze.

This lack of faith is further buoyed by attempts by the Republican candidate to exploit catastrophes to cause division. Hurricane Helene serves as a prime example of this phenomenon. Trump lied repeatedly to the public, claiming that the Biden administration was not sending FEMA aid, and that Republican areas were actively being neglected by the administration. Rallying fear in this manner might have helped strengthen his base and thus secure him the presidency, but it also put citizens in real danger by preventing them from understanding the truth of the resources available to them. Telling fibs about opponents is one thing; doing so at the expense of American lives is another.

Now, post-election, there is even more to be said about the steady erosion of institutional faith. As Trump continues naming cabinet appointees, his insistence on selecting highly unqualified and controversial figures is degrading the positions he intends to fill. Matt Gaetz, for example, was nominated for the role of Attorney General, despite the ethics investigation he was undergoing in the House of Representatives for sexual misconduct. Additionally, Trump wants to make Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a known anti-vaxxer whose brain was partially consumed by a parasite, the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

To Trump, this Jacksonian-style spoils system might seem unremarkable. For him, it’s just a way to give power to his friends and most loyal supporters, and since our country has already handed him a blank check to do as he pleases, there shouldn’t be an issue. What he fails to realize, however, is that as more articles pour out about the corruption deep within the White House — making a man with no medical background HHS Secretary, and a woman accused of being a Russian pawn the Director of National Intelligence — the world is watching.

The international community is seeing how the President of the United States is lying about his intentions in selecting the members who will make up his cabinet, lying about their credibility, lying with impunity because he believes he can so easily deceive the American people. With time, they’ll come to regard our country as one where corruption is normalized, and where citizens simply shrug off violations of core government institutions. So, it’s not just Americans losing faith in our government — it’s everyone.

This is not to say that the Republican party was the sole dispenser of false information during this election, or that their behavior is the only one worth condemning. The Democratic party deserves condemnation as well for their complete lack of transparency during their campaign this election cycle.

The most obvious instance of deception, one that will forever loom over the 2024 election, was the mental capacity of Joe Biden. President Biden, who up until July was the de facto Democratic nominee, was touted by the Democratic party as a highly effective politician with a fiery spirit and the only one who could stand up to Donald Trump. The June 27th debate changed everything.

At the debate, Biden seemed frail, often faltering over words and losing his train of thought. At one point, he proclaimed nonsensically that his administration had “finally beat Medicare.” This version of Biden, who had been largely kept out of the public eye, shocked viewers everywhere. It felt as though the thin film of conspiracy had finally been pulled back, revealing the shining awful truth underneath it. Biden was not the competent incumbent the party had claimed he was, and despite the attempts of the administration to draw the film back over our eyes, they could not successfully convince anyone that he had merely had a cold.

It was from the ruins of Biden’s fallen empire that Kamala Harris arose, promising to the nation that “we are not going back.” Yet, one has to wonder how true that sentiment proved to be. Looking at the state of current political affairs, with one party forever scarred by the fallout of a disastrous debate and the other lashing out against the system like a wounded bear cub, it’s clear that our democracy is not what it once was. And what does it say about our political atmosphere that we’ve moved on so quickly from each deception?

A final and ever-noteworthy element of deceit during the election has been the Israel-Palestine war. Because of the importance of American relations with Israel, candidates from both major parties refrained from calling out the human rights violations which have been occurring in Gaza over the past year. It’s not just the candidates, however, who have made efforts to conceal the truth from the American people. It’s the media.

One shocking report says that CNN aired false Israeli government claims about the bombing of a children’s hospital in Gaza. Apparently, an Israeli military official presented an Arabic document to a CNN correspondent that he claimed was a list of terrorists guarding Israeli hostages at the hospital. It was, in reality, a calendar.

This piece of propaganda was not only false; it had already been debunked on social media. But CNN aired the story regardless, contributing to the willful deception of the public on the issue of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The New York Times was implicated in a related scandal when the Intercept released a leaked NYT memo which showed that journalists were told not to use the word “genocide” and to avoid calling Palestine by its name. The Times has been called out repeatedly for engaging in biased reporting of the conflict, yet any evidence suggesting that this has been an established internal policy is still surprising.

In a contentious election, it is reprehensible for media outlets to actively censor Palestinian perspectives and air false information in order to further the narratives of the political machine. Yet journalistic integrity seems to be just one of the many remnants of truth that have been happily added to the bonfire this election season.

Truth is a vital component of democracy. In an election year, it is especially important. The public needs to be informed effectively about the issues their society faces, or they risk electing individuals who will not prioritize core voter needs and erode democratic institutions, something we’ve seen in America time and time again. Now, we face a new kind of erosion — not necessarily of institutions, but rather of principles.

We live in a world where American political candidates can lie freely to their people with little to no repercussions; a world where trusted media outlets can choose to spread information about a war in order to further their needs. Every miniscule lie, every discovered falsehood, chips away at our frail democracy. It’s safe to say that our system of government cannot survive without our faith in its effectiveness. And as the truth begins to seem less and less certain, as our vision clouds with every narrative we’re told, our trust in our government will disintegrate.

We need the truth. Our democracy depends on it.