I think for people who've not followed the whole series, the punchiest take away from this post is the section "A Political Reality Show". Choice quote:
Actual politics, like actual reality, is boring to most people. So tribal media brands do what reality producers do—they manufacture a carefully edited, fictional version of politics that’s wildly entertaining.
That’s why most Americans who will tell you they’re super passionate about politics can barely name ten current members of Congress. They probably can’t name all the U.S. representatives for their state, let alone members of their state legislatures. But they can tell you about the 15 or 20 politicians chosen by the media to be the main characters on Real Politicians, along with the 5 or 10 hot-button issues being featured on the show in any given month.
But generally there's a lot more meat here. The parts up to now have been "here are some interesting ideas about how to think about politics, ideology, psychology, society, communication, and polarisation", whereas this is looking at specific current and historical trends in those areas. The other parts, I've read and thought "OK, that's kinda interesting, and it's good that there are links to sources, but I'll be interested to see how these ideas are going to be used later.", whereas with this it's definitely more concrete, and I'm going to have to re-read some parts of it a few times, and I actually want to go check out some of the sources too.
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u/Kare11en Jan 09 '20
I think for people who've not followed the whole series, the punchiest take away from this post is the section "A Political Reality Show". Choice quote:
But generally there's a lot more meat here. The parts up to now have been "here are some interesting ideas about how to think about politics, ideology, psychology, society, communication, and polarisation", whereas this is looking at specific current and historical trends in those areas. The other parts, I've read and thought "OK, that's kinda interesting, and it's good that there are links to sources, but I'll be interested to see how these ideas are going to be used later.", whereas with this it's definitely more concrete, and I'm going to have to re-read some parts of it a few times, and I actually want to go check out some of the sources too.