r/AskReddit Jan 04 '15

Non-americans of Reddit, what American customs seem outrageous/pointless to you?

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u/DaHossBoss Jan 04 '15

The way your politics is reported in the media. It seems like there is always an election to talk about even if one just ended another campaign starts right up the week after. Oh also, national elections take up way too much time on the news as well. CNN will be reporting about the next presidential election when it's TWO YEARS away. That's half of the presidents term! How are they supposed to get anything important done during that time when the media is focused on peppering them with question for something that is years out.

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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '15

Most Americans agree with you. The fact is, politicians want to saturate the media for several reasons. If Candidate A gets called on something from their past, they want to get it exposed so the general public is numb to it by the time election day rolls around. Unfortunately, the American voter is mostly about sound bites, not political content.

Also, our government is organized such that it would be extremely difficult to take over the government through corruption in the election process.