I told myself that I wasn’t going to write about the election. Without a doubt the 2016 presidential race has been quite the spectacle, but the 24/7 news coverage tends to beat any journalistic opportunity to death before most people even hear about it. But, I figure I might as well throw my two cents in the mix before it’s over. This is not meant to sway anyone. I believe there is a clear choice but my views on that would be nothing you haven’t heard before. I am, however, going take a step back and talk about what this election really is, absurd.

I’m sure you read the word absurd and assume it synonymous with words such as ridiculous or crazy. In this light I would consider the notion to be something we as the voting population are hyper aware of, I can’t scroll through my Facebook feed without seeing some re-posted article about the insanity of the whole ordeal. Yet, this is the status-quo, whoever’s fault it may be this is what it has come to. We question it, but never truly try to learn why. You can lay blame wherever you want but such an approach rarely achieves results, the U.S. government is far too complex for finger pointing. Paradoxically, that is much of what this election cycle has been centered around.

We have been presented with two candidates, one of change and the other of stability. Neither really possess the tact to be the so-called leader of the free world, and both have their fair share of controversy. Such controversies seem to be examined in increments, and taken at face value. The grasp most voters have on these situations is analogous with the understanding of one who has seen the movie but not read the book. Not all, but many voters are unable to explain what the Clinton email scandal is actually about, or even point Benghazi out on a map. Furthermore, most can’t really say anything for sure about Trump’s business career over the past few decades other than that he was born into a rich family and has dealt with an insurmountable number of lawsuits.

And for the most part, this is what the focus has been on. We tend to put the individual under the microscope rather than the platform or the group they are backed by. It might be problematic, but it is far from surprising. Between Trump’s ostentatious odyssey from reality TV star to GOP nominee and Hillary’s underdog struggle against an irrefutably patriarchal system, this election has turned into a news executive’s wet dream. It’s entertaining as hell, but do we really know what’s at stake?

It depends on who you ask. From what I can tell a lot of people are more concerned with not electing the wrong person instead of electing the right person. They see the opposition as a threat to the integrity of their worldview, but don’t really believe their candidate to be a solution. That is because neither is a solution. This is the absurd part of it. It’s not that tensions in this country are particularly high, they are but that’s nothing new, it’s that this is how we are choosing to deal with them.

Consider our current choices of “solution” to be the result of indifference, and bear with me while I digress for a moment. What I’m referring to when I say this election is absurd is the philosophical use of the word. Take the story of Sisyphus: a Greek mythological figure who was forever faced with the task of pushing a boulder up a hill, only to have the boulder come tumbling back down due to it’s own weight. At the end of his famous essay correlating this story with the idea of Absurdism, Albert Camus writes, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” His point being that despite the lack of meaning to Sisyphus’s actions, the struggle of pushing the boulder up the mountain is all that he has, and that is enough.

This may not be a perfect analogy but I believe this is our country’s own unique version of absurdity, the acceptance of the status quo and willingness to take such important issues at face value have spurned a downward spiral of indifference that landed us here. A politically driven existential crisis on a national scale. There was a quiet sense of desperation in that indifference, festering as it failed to be acted upon. Now we find ourselves as a nation so polarized and paranoid that even a stance of neutrality risks demonization. That desperation has turned into a feeling of impending doom breathing down our necks, you can hear it creeping up with every newscast and soundbite. 

Sam Jefferson is a junior majoring in economics. His column runs biweekly.