This entire Manchin/Sinema debacle has been turned into entertainment by a media profiting off chaos and dysfunction.
This isn't a game. People are suffering.
We have to recognize how this ugly business has very real consequences.
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jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/this-isnt-a-…
This isn't a game. People are suffering.
We have to recognize how this ugly business has very real consequences.
1/
jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/this-isnt-a-…
From the very beginning, Manchin and Sinema have been taking advantage of how our media treats politics like spectacle and entertainment, using their dissenting votes as an opportunity to gain attention and fundraise through lobbyists looking to affect their decisions.
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By focusing on incidents like Sinema being followed into a bathroom, attention has been shifted from the legislation which will actually make lives better for living, breathing people into mini-scenes of morality and ethics.
This is how our media works.
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This is how our media works.
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A visually arresting scene, like a millionaire senator looking down from his extravagant yacht, seizes the attention of the moment, distracting from whether or not we're going to actually start investing in the lives of Americans, and changing the conversation entirely.
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Meanwhile, the tension of the moment is exploited for shows, segments, articles, clicks, retweets, sketches, memes, all of it an industry that drains any of the actual substance of the debate from the topic and replaces it with ready-for-media storylines.
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Our current political environment is reduced by media to a war among god-like figures, heroes and villains who, based on their warring, can determine the fate of the people.
This changes focus from our representative bodies as representatives to simplified power plays.
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This changes focus from our representative bodies as representatives to simplified power plays.
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Because this is spectacle, our representatives are turned into characters.
Manchin becomes a hand-wringing moderate concerned with budgets and deficits, a veteran killjoy upon whom everybody waits for his deliberation.
All the while he simply a stooge for fossil fuel.
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Manchin becomes a hand-wringing moderate concerned with budgets and deficits, a veteran killjoy upon whom everybody waits for his deliberation.
All the while he simply a stooge for fossil fuel.
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Sinema gets turned into an unpredictable wildcard, which all but obscures the fact that she's fundraising off corporate lobbyists who want her to kill any legislation that will actually help regular American citizens.
The intent gets lost behind the infotainment sheen.
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The intent gets lost behind the infotainment sheen.
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While our media focuses attention on power plays, sweeping dramas, and characters, figures like Mitch McConnell handle the very real machinery of power to ensure that government functions only as a tool to redistribute wealth from the bottom up.
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Because we emphasize drama and spectacle, we lose sight of what's actually at stake.
A nation crumbling by the day after decades of cruel austerity. Human beings struggling to make ends meet and falling behind. Shortened, more miserable lives that could be helped.
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A nation crumbling by the day after decades of cruel austerity. Human beings struggling to make ends meet and falling behind. Shortened, more miserable lives that could be helped.
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Substantive, real issues like climate change, education, infrastructure, the social safety net don't make for compelling TV or draw as much attention.
This means they get ignored, forgotten, all in favor of featuring these heroes and villains, saviors and devils.
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This means they get ignored, forgotten, all in favor of featuring these heroes and villains, saviors and devils.
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The history of how we got here is instructive. Emerging media like television shifted politics toward outsized personalities and dramatic moments of tension and confrontations.
From the very beginning it began to change the nature of our politics away from substance.
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From the very beginning it began to change the nature of our politics away from substance.
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The modern era of spectacle and politics as entertainments was ushered in by Ronald Reagan, a complete hack of an actor who presented to the media ready-made entertainment in order to boost their ratings, advertising dollars, and attract viewers/consumers.
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Reagan had no idea what he was talking about any given time, but he was able to serve up politics as a TV show while think-tanks funded by the wealthiest Americans took over politics and ensured all policy and energy would move toward enriching themselves.
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All along, cable news networks and emerging media ensured that political debate was transformed into political combat.
Like Reagan, substance didn't matter. It was about personalities. It was about tense moments. It removed politics completely from reality.
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Like Reagan, substance didn't matter. It was about personalities. It was about tense moments. It removed politics completely from reality.
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Understanding this, it isn't hard to grasp how a complete fraud of a reality TV host became president.
Donald Trump personified politics as entertainment. He had no actual understanding, but was more than willing to create ratings-driving controversy.
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Donald Trump personified politics as entertainment. He had no actual understanding, but was more than willing to create ratings-driving controversy.
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The problem wasn't just that Trump was chaotic and destructive. It was that our media was entirely tuned to profit off of this dysfunction.
Channels, papers, websites, all of them profited wildly off Trump while America and its people suffered.
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Channels, papers, websites, all of them profited wildly off Trump while America and its people suffered.
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Our entire media infrastructure is explicitly wired to prioritize destructive actors and forward dangerous ideas.
This is why social media traffics misinformation/conspiracy theories/radicalizing concepts. It's good for business.
In fact, it's GREAT for business.
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This is why social media traffics misinformation/conspiracy theories/radicalizing concepts. It's good for business.
In fact, it's GREAT for business.
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Trump capitalized off a media complex that was addicted to his antics and chaos, using their need for profit to his advantage.
This is the end result of an entire ecosystem focused on controversy, characters, and spectacle as a replacement for politics.
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This is the end result of an entire ecosystem focused on controversy, characters, and spectacle as a replacement for politics.
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And it doesn't end with Trump. He spawned an entire new generation of attention-seeking, controversy-sells grifters like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who have no actual agenda other than agitating in order to go viral or make themselves the newest "character" in the show.
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The Republican Party is overflowing now with Trumpist grifters, all of them rejecting politics as a means of making lives better in order to profit off their controversy and pursue, with reckless abandon, profile-raising stunts that literally hurt the nation.
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And what's more, as long as the media prioritizes spectacle and entertainment, these grifters and wanna-be reality stars will only push the envelope with more and more dangerous stunts, including adopting fascistic ideas and threatening the rule of law and democracy.
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If we're going to fix this, we have to reject the culture of spectacle and entertainment, understand that these people AREN'T CHARACTERS, they're supposed to be public servants and they're dealing with very real and very important issues of life or death.
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For more information on how this twisting of reality for profit and power happened, you can check out my book AMERICAN RULE, which dives into the history and details how we've arrived at this moment of crisis.
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penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611439/a…
24/24
penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611439/a…
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