The Daily Tar Heel
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The Daily Tar Heel

Column: Don't worry, we can make it worse

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American politics do not make sense anymore. 

After stumbling through the 2016 elections like babies learning how to walk as countless flashbang grenades were rolled into their line of sight, the public may have taken some respite in the thought that it was over. We hoped that now maybe everything could at least fall apart logically.   

We were so incredibly, painfully wrong. 

Instead of declining with any form of dignity, our nation has elected to hurl itself into a few inches of standing water, while thrashing about in an imitation of drowning so obviously self-inflicted that it might be funny if it wasn’t also so completely terrible. 

So far, our reaction as an audience to this performance has been one of horrified passivity. We’ve stood by, watching with glazed-over eyes, like mind-melted characters in a Lovecraft story witnessing some unimaginable terror, as our daily news feed reached higher and higher levels of absurdity. We’ve commented with pained humor about how no headline can surprise us anymore; how reality is beginning to compete with The Onion. We’ve struggled to accept the absolute ridiculousness of our current world, waiting in dreadful anticipation for everything to just go back to normal. 

But it’s growing increasingly clear that nothing is going back to normal. In fact, the plague of absurdity has proven to not be endemic to America, spreading all across the globe as everything stops making sense. Literally everything. 

So, let’s take action. And no, I’m not talking about electing reasonable, level-headed politicians or working to hold governments and companies accountable or seriously addressing the dubious quality of our political discourse. Don’t be ridiculous. Since it appears nothing we do can stop the world from descending into madness, there’s nothing for the truly logical person to do than just accept this and double down. If our politics is already going insane, why not give it our best effort and make our government the most absurd, dangerously unhinged organization to ever claim to run a country?

I would like to personally challenge American voters to not settle for how terrible our situation is right now; I truly believe that, if we all come together, we can make this worse. We won’t be outdone by other countries with their leaders cursing out foreign dignitaries or openly manipulating other nations’ elections. Our American sense of exceptionalism demands the best of us, even when we’re being just awful — about everything.

So, let’s be the most awful, let’s try and outdo ourselves and elect someone even more unqualified, even less presidential come 2020. Let’s build so many walls you literally can’t leave your house and just throw out the entire court system, because clearly nobody cares anyways. As true Americans, we should not settle until we are forced to choose between Vladimir Putin and Mark Zuckerberg (aka the All-Powerful Lizard King/Great Scaly One) for president. In this day and age, it is the only reasonable reaction.        

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