If you’re like me, you took advantage of early voting. There are many reasons to vote early, but I do it hoping all these insane political ads will end. How many times do I have to listen to one politician lie about his opponent or see political attack ads telling me how to vote on a ballot proposition? Again, they rely on lies to try to win the day at the ballot box, and I have more important things to watch, like who’s going to be tossed off Love Island. Now that’s life-changing.
Not everyone who votes is politically savvy. Many voters make their electoral decisions based on what they see on cable television and the internet, and what they hear on the radio. I didn’t include newspapers because they’re dinosaurs and on their way to extinction. If you want to know what an expert from a famous newspaper has to say, just turn on FOX News or MSNOW. I think they spend most of their time on television opining on this or that. When do they have time to write anything, and if they do, by all accounts, nobody reads their articles.
I am coming out of my bedroom, where I have been hiding with a pillow over my head, to comment on political ads. Unfortunately, no matter how much I try to hide, I can still hear them through the pillow. When I’m done here, I’m going to find my noise-canceling headphones and put on some white noise.
The first thing that drives me crazy isn’t so much the content of the commercials as how often they air. They run the same commercial over and over, and the ad never changes. Given how much money these big-buck political donors put behind these ads, you’d think they would come up with several different ideas. I don’t know anyone who looks forward to seeing the same ad run ten times during a football game. I want more beer ads. Each game, I have an important decision to make: which fermented, carbonated malt beverage I should drink while watching my team cough up a few fumbles on a Sunday.
Even though they run the same ad every time, these messages are confusing. If the ad is against a proposition, it gives only one reason: that the prop is a tax hike, even when it isn’t. They never really lay out what the propositions are really for, just their lie. When it is a candidate, the ad attacks the opposing candidate’s character, not their real-life positions. We have a case out here where two Republicans are running for the same congressional district. Both have held their seats for a long time and don’t want to let go. Their campaigns accuse the other candidate of corruption and of using their time in Congress to enrich themselves…which happens to be true. That’s refreshing: politicians telling the truth. Is there a chance they could both lose?
While many of these ads try to scare us into voting the way the sponsors want, they aren’t very clear about who is sponsoring the campaign. Many candidate ads don’t tell you whether they’re Democrat, Republican, or independent. I guess they want you to decide who to vote for without all the baggage that comes with their affiliation. On the propositions, when the final line pops up on the screen telling us who paid for the ad, it is so confusing; you will never know who is truly pushing the idea. For example, one proposition pushes a one-time tax on billionaires. According to the ads’ credits, all kinds of citizen groups have sponsored ads against the proposition These groups are just fronts for billionaires trying to stop the proposition. Why don’t they just pay the taxes instead of trying to buy a victory that will cost millions and still have to pay the tax when it passes? How do I know it will pass? Because I know people are pissed about footing the bill for the debt our government has created, and billionaires seem to be exempt from pitching in. I’m not bitter, but I know a lot of people who are.
Speaking of the money spent on political ads, consider how much goes into them; imagine if that same cash went toward addressing the problems our society faces. That makes sense, so that is why it doesn’t happen. People with that much money want to keep it, then make even more, and not share it with us little people. Oh, to have such problems.
It’s only a few days until the election, and I look forward to the quiet. I also hope we elect some people who will put us, their constituents, before their greed. I know better, but I have always been a dreamer.
©2026BBRiley.
