Trump depends upon the opposing media he seeks to exclude. Its opposition generates the conflict through which his political identity acquires force. The wizard needs the curtain, but he also needs someone on the other side insisting that we look behind it.
Communication systems can make an interpretation familiar before it has been examined, significant before it has been understood, and consequential before anyone establishes whether it is true.
The student walkout against One Nation points to a larger problem: the affective politics of cultivated antagonism that has become disconcertingly effective as a technologically-mediated, commercially-leveraged narrative system.
A nation cannot be unified by dividing a people against themselves. The danger begins when that contradiction becomes a political method.
Political science inherits the person from philosophy without explaining it.
Social media did not create the grievance. It synchronised millions of separate frustrations into a single political force.
Extreme wealth is not independence. It is an unusually successful dependence upon everyone else.
Corruption begins when reward outpaces responsibility, reflecting the tendency of complex communication systems to abbreviate consequence and concentrate advantage.
Freedom is easy to celebrate in theory and much harder to preserve in practice.
A country does not collapse when it disagrees; it collapses when disagreement becomes the structure that holds it together.
Theirs is a role play of analysis, simply and unwittingly giftwrapping populist-adjacent themes for broad public consumption; little on insight, big on performative role play.
Just my perspective.
Your mileage may vary.
