2016 Election Guide to (Sorta) Knowing What the F**** You're Arguing About

"...but Bernie is gonna make college free and and send all the big bankers to jail and re-distriubute wealth and give health care to everyone and overcome the gender gap and save the planet and lead a radical socialist revolution in this country!! What do you mean, you're not voting for him?"

"It's unfortunate, but indisputable. Ted Cruz is simply too weird looking to be President."

"Ok, so the the thing about the Benghazi scandal is... it was actually.. so you see, Benghazi is a place in Libya.. and you know what can we talk about something other than Hillary Clinton's damn e-mails??"

"Did you see what Donald Trump tweeted about that Fox lady last night?"

"You're only anti-Hillary because deep, deep down, you aren't even READY for a woman President."

"Uhhh... who's John Kasich?"

Welcome to my first blog *series*. This is very exciting!!

Election season tends to bring out the crazy in all of us. And this election in particular did not seem to hold back on the crazy one bit. It was just like, "Oh hi, 2016. You thought this was gonna be a run-of-the-mill Clinton Dynasty v.s. Bush Dynasty sort of showdown, didn't ya? Hahahaa, oh no, I'm funnier than that. Meet Ben Carson. He's a neurosurgeon who's going to ask a group of school children to point to the dumbest kid in their class. And here's that one racist guy with a TV show, Donald Trump. Everyone will brush him off at first, but no worries, he'll stick around for a while. Even after he publicly hesitates to condemn the KKK."

And so on.

I think it's very fun to watch everyone get all riled up about how awesome Candidate X and post lengthy appeals to their Facebook friends about how if Candidate Y wins, the country will go to ruins and they'll move to Canada.

In all seriousness, it's really awesome to see so many people care about something -- regardless about what that something is. I walk past several impassioned yet rather improvisational political debates on the NYU campus, and this is my attempt to add a little meat to the occasionally bare-bones arguments that I've eavesdropped.

I can't guarantee that this stuff will actually help you make sense of the very nonsensical political arena out there. These are just spur of the moment ideas I come up with and then haphazardly attempt to create. It's also worth noting that I am no expert on this stuff myself; I'm just a good Googler and fact regurgitator. If anyone has any suggestions or corrections to anything I post, I'd be thrilled to hear them.

1. Election 2016 Glossary

For your first stop, here's my glossary to all the big buzzwords that keep coming up in the election. A handy thing to have by your side while watching a debate, because it's easy to get lost in fancy rhetoric.

And it's the things you hear a million times that you'll realize you actually don't know super well. Come on, do you reeeally know what Citizens United is? (Yes? Okay, cool. Here's a wow-you're-so-smart trophy!)

2. To Agree or Disagree: A Sanders/Clinton Venn Diagram

A debate I often find myself a part of is the good ol' center-left v.s. very-left Hillary/Bernie cat fight. A lot of the people who prefer either Hillary or Bernie may not always realize exactly where these two Dems actually agree and where they differ. These Venn diagrams are intended to give you a snapshot sense of that for each major topic.

As always, thank you for checking out my nerdy stuff and more to come.

💋 💋,
          Elif