How is this a Thing?

Sarah Blankenship
sb856312@ohio.edu

Information is being manipulated in every single way that people can possibly think of.

I would not consider myself to be a political person, nor would I say I keep up with the political debates enough to understand it all. I'm a busy student and I don't want to waste my time listening to the foolish banter that comes about with the debates.

I pay to come to college at Ohio University to get an education that will better my future, but somehow, everywhere I turn there is talk of how people are trying to trick us. The government, big companies, political candidates and people we are supposed to trust are doing whatever they can to persuade us.

In tonight's political debate, that I only heard because my roommate was playing it loudly in the next room, Hillary and Trump were trying to prove which one of them was less-awful for the position of our country. How is this a thing? What has our country come to?

Provided by The New Yorker 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BLxIUthDOoz/?taken-by=newyorkermag

During the last debate before the election, they talked about who had lied more and who's lies were worse. I recall Trump bringing up how something Hillary had previously said in a debate was fact-checked and was proven to be false. In a way he was laughing in her face about it.

An article we were called to read for today spoke of how the Bush administration paid a media commentator to talk about and promote No Child Left Behind. Sure, this is for a good cause but it raises questions on how people in politics gain their power.

This makes me think of how it is said that the Clinton Foundation accepted donations from other countries that don't stand for the same freedoms as the United States.

Like I said, I'm not political, but things just aren't adding up. It doesn't make sense.

I'm not only hearing this from the political debates. In my sustainability writing class we have watched videos and read chapters about how it has been confirmed that the people with power have lied to us. They use their rhetoric to deceive and make their way to the top.

In the film Merchants of Doubt, it talks about how big companies lie and how it works! It took 50 years for people to find out that tobacco products were made to be addictive and for changes to be made. The tobacco companies knew the whole time, lied about it and got away with it. How is this a thing?

I am a journalism student and I like to be informed, but I know that there a lot more people in the world that are more informed than me. I would like to know how things slip past the public and policies are not being changed?

Don't people say we live in the greatest country on earth? Then explain to me how it is so corrupt.

We must learn to be skeptical and critical of the information we read and hear every day.