Election 2024: Three Emerging Issues
/By Don Varyu
Oct 2023
hey say you can’t predict the future, but one thing seems certain. Every day between now and November 5, 2024, will be filled to overflowing with election “news”—polling, predictions and pretensions. And this will all play out against the backdrop of Donald Trump staggering through the thicket of his legal jungle. This is our future.
Of course, there will be the occasional “hot issue”—a missing teen here, a government shutdown there. But something more may be brewing in voters’ minds. These are three emerging realities that don’t grab headlines now…but which could become decisive by the time voters fill out their ballots. Maybe the best way to consider this is to recall how COVID moved from a footnote somewhere in China to dominate our thoughts and our lives. These issues may not have that potential…but they’re coming…
1. Climate Crisis
Phoenix went every day for more than a month with temperatures exceeding 110 degrees--once reaching 117; children burned their hands on plastic playground slides. Midwesterners learned a new word--”derecho”-- windstorms with 100mph gusts. Massive rainstorms in New England claimed thousands of homes, and flood waters shut down Vermont’s capital city of Montpelier. A huge hurricane battered not the east coast, but the west; some areas of California received a year’s worth of rain in a couple hours. Wildfire smoke choked much of the northern United States. Ocean waters off Florida reached 106 degrees; on the beach; people got out of the water to cool off. And above the arctic circle, the ground itself caught fire.
Everyone notices now.
Citizens realize climate collapse threatens them, their families, and their livelihoods. One environmental scientist says the one thing she can’t find anymore is a climate denier; they’ve either changed their minds or gone underground. Which means an inflection point is upon us. When frightened voters demand action, candidates have no choice but to listen. Al Gore wasn’t wrong; his audience just wasn’t ready yet.
2. Artificial Intelligence
The threat of computers in control shocked viewers of the 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Then, the threat got a name--“artificial intelligence”--with the arrival of the 1999 movie, The Matrix. Still, it took a while for the threat to sink in. But now it’s pounding the table and demanding attention. The most prevalent fear is that AI will “take my job”, and in many cases, this will be true. But more widely, generative AI will blur, if not obliterate, the divide between the real and the fake. In politics, commercials will be developed demonstrating candidates saying and doing things that never really happened. No matter, many will simply consider them “proof” of newly hatched conspiracy theories. All this stands ready to make previous MAGA-fueled delusions look like training camp.
Not too long ago, AI researchers and developers agreed on three concrete assurances to protect society. First, AI applications would not be released into the public until they were properly safeguarded. Second, AI would not be taught to write computer code. And third, AI applications would not be programmed to talk to other AI.
Each of these barriers has already been breached.
3. Authoritarian Rule
The history of civilization is this: power rules. Kings and tyrants and dictators get what they want because they have the force to make it so. Americans think of ourselves as special because we adopted a different model--where the people rule—and worked to export it to the rest of the world. For a time, we did seem special.
But by now, this export business has gone bust.
Our prime adversaries, China and Russia, are ruled by dictatorial leaders. In Saudi Arabia, one family uses wealth as both protection and permission to kill journalists, jail rivals and steal their wealth. In Israel, the prime minister is in the process of evaporating that democracy, attempting to replace it with a Jewish caliphate. A band of contiguous nations across the widest part of Africa are now ruled by national military force. And Hungary, Italy and France have all flirted with right wing control—or already surrendered to it. None of this even begins to consider North Korea or Central and South America.
We’d like to think that this could never happen here. And then we remember January 6th.
The threats to our democracy already resonate with the majority of voters, and Joe Biden seems intent to make sure everyone hears the message. At the John McCain memorial in Phoenix, he warned “…democracies don’t have to die at the end of a rifle; they can also die when people are silent, when they fail to stand up and condemn threats to democracy.” and he listed those threats as Donald Trump and MAGA.
Rational Americans know that, if elected,Trump will have no restraints on his native impulse to seize and exert power. He is the ancient dictator reborn. His propagandists, along with malign forces from Russia and China, are working to invent enough falsehoods to convince voters that electing Democrats would be even worse. Could this happen?
Well, it already did once.
For decades, we’ve heard one election after another described as “the most important in our history.” This time, that claim is indisputable. As climate collapse, artificial intelligence and an imminent dictatorship continue to weigh heavier on voters’ minds, those fears may swing the election. It remains to be seen whether news outlets will realize this in time and cease with their horserace madness.
Have a comment or thought on this? Just hit the Your Turn tab here or email us at mailbox@cascadereview.net to have your say.
