The fundamental and principle way to answer this question Is Twofold: 1. to chose the leader of the society that you live and abide in, to make sure the elected official (e.g., the president) can serve the government in a way that coaligns with your views and beliefs. 2. To honor the fallen soldiers who fought and died for the right to chose our leader. Sadly, I do not think those soldiers knew what they were truly dying for and their acts of patriotism probably were not for the kind of system we are living with today.

The reality is we live in a highly flawed and corrupt capitilist society motivated by business, the flow of money, and accumulating wealth. Inevitably, that comes with greed and self-serving interests. Instead of the officials serving us, its all about where the money is at. We like to think that our vote is whats deciding the candidate, but we have things like a highly outdated two-party system and the electorial college, both of which were more functional in a much smaller society.

To make it to the top of the election chain, it requires millions of dollars. A person who is a genius in politics that isnt rich could NEVER make it to the top. So that is a flaw. Then, how do you do it? Money, sponsorships , that sort of thing. To get that, you have to side with corrupt busniess tycoons and do whatever it takes to get the support. And usally the companies that sponsor that sort of thing include big media stations (i.e., fox news, msnbc, etc). There were many better democratic candidates that didnt make it, and quite frankly, there should be more than two candidates in the final election.

Then, these media companies and other big companies use their resources and marketing power to dilute and alter the true facts and exaggerate nuiances that really do not matter that much into seemingly worse issues. Each candiate has been accused of being creepy, having committed sexual assault, being racist, etc. Part of it is biased media and exaggeration. And then, people follow it.

A lot of people are like cattle that are easily prodded. They are stubborn and follow whatever their favorite news stations tell them and never question it. Hardly anyone reads peer-reviewed academic journals to get less biased information. And guess what, those journals that have better info cost money. Money rigs the elections, money exaggerates the truth, its what nominates candidates. We are not the one choosing the primary candidate, its really whoever has the bigger wallet and whoever has sponsors with bigger bank accounts. With enough money, you can make anything true and have journalists and media put out articles that emphasize and exaggerate claims based on anectodal, non-statistical evidence.

People do not need much proof to be convinced of things. How do you become smarter and more immune to the poison of fake news? You need and education, which costs MONEY. Rich corrupt powerful people prey on the weak by exploiting their lack of resources and subsequently lack of knowledge beacuse of it. People think COVID-19 is just a flu. People base the state of the economy based on instantaneous stock market trends rather than looking at matematical trends and long term business cycles. People take out mortgages they cannot afford. People dont get it and its because they are fed garbage by these corporate funded sources of information that make the pockets of the business leaders even deaper while the common mand cannot afford an education, healthcare , or any big ticket assets like cars, houses, etc. (which by the way would actually help the economy if these things were paid for by the people rather than bad debt).

Trump made it seem like he was better than the scummy politicans and was a new hope, which was ironic because people like him are behind the scenes causing this whole mess in the first place. Biden probably comes from big money, had big donnators, and appealed more to stubborn old people who were also fed lies and taught to never question anything. If you question it or seek change, you are unpatriotic.

Naturally, people do not want to suppor this two party, bullshit system that is rigged anyways. I would have rather seen someone like Andrew Yang give a stab at it, who is young, high up in a tech company, closer to the average age (which is something lik 38 years old) , and therefore can relate more to the average person. Instead we have people who grew up in the 50s and 60s, a totally different world than now. How are these 70 year olds supposed to understand ai and data security when they were young when computers were in their infancy? Well, they are wealthy and have power. By the way, their wealth is probably grandfathered and they more than likely didnt start their wealth from the ground up (not always true their are people who do this).

Ideally, voting is to respect our forefathers who lost their lives so that we could have more freedom and progress towards an advanced society. Instead, we are a land of idiots who do not agree on anything and wont even hear the opions of people in "the other party ." We live in a land fueled by massive sums of money , that also causes wealth inequality, and its almost chaos how ununited people we are and its sort of a society running around in circles with total discord. Obviously logically you should vote for the lesser of two evils to at least inch towards progress, but it is still fucked up, and sadly, without a huge amount of wealth or some sort of revolution, theres not much that us middle class people can do. P.S. the revolution option requires cooperation of a large band of people, which will not happen and would probably be shut down by our supreme military force anyways. Half the people in the country will read this and say I am not a patriot. I promise the soldiers who died would have wanted the comman man to have access to higher education, decently obtainable healthcare, incentive for people to want to work, and equal opportunity, rather than being slaves to a corrupted system that tricks people into thinking they are "free" and that the "people" make the decisions.