I mostly tune out when political ads flood my email in-box or ruin my TV viewing (not streaming video—I have no use for streaming or video games as escapes from reality).
First, it’s impossible for a political candidate or party to summarize the main points of their campaign in a thirty- or sixty-second TV ad. It just can’t be done! So their ads essentially become zero-content or attack ads that waste my time.
Second, I have to conclude that if those ads are at all effective with my contemporaries, the human race is in big trouble! In other words, if most people make their voting decisions about who or what deserves their vote with so little information, how can democracy survive? (It’s dying, of course, but more because of leaders like Trump than their ads.)
Third, I believe those who are pushing a candidate or cause use these absurdly short statements to hide all sorts of things from us. Here’s an example; Trump during his 2024 campaign stating that he knows nothing about Project 2025. Fact: After reading more extensively about this almost 1000-page Heritage Foundation blueprint to destroy democracy in America, I had to conclude that that it’s a hundred times more dangerous than Mein Kampf and that Narcissus le Grand has been faithfully following it during the first months of his four-year term! (For example, destroying the entire DoE or going after trans.) Either Trump is reading and following the plan to the letter, or his handlers are (many of them worked on it!).
It might seem boring at times, but reading extensive exposes of candidates and their causes makes you a better citizen and might just preserve American democracy. Please read serious non-fiction and fiction. Don’t read fluff like fantasies, romances, and erotica. You’ll not learn anything from the latter; you will from the former. Make your reading count two ways: As entertainment and as information gathering. Democracy in America is at stake!