Hank Green had a recent video on this that’s super applicable. His basic idea was that our (American) society has shifted to the point where everything the mass public does, including politics/voting, is basically vibes-based. So, politicians who are successful get successful based off vibes and aesthetic.
The video contrasts Trump and Mamdani- basically, Mamdani uses aesthetic and the flashy, “look at me helping you” social media vibe of his to get the less flashy but more important stuff done. It will help New Yorkers, but they don’t care about that until after it’s already done, and even then they might not realize what actually happened.
Trump, on the other hand, does aesthetic and that’s it. His policies don’t make logical sense because he doesn’t care about logic- he does something because it sounds tough or it sounds patriotic. There’s two problems with this- tough and patriotic in the American sense are incredibly violent and bigoted, and Trump is really good at being “tough and patriotic”.
This is why to me, political division isn’t something that we can fix or compromise our way out of. We’re stuck in a system of aesthetics and so long as we are, it will always be the hopeful voting for the aesthetic of hope, and the “tough and patriotic” voting for the oppressive, fascist aesthetic of “tough and patriotic”. To me, it is unfathomably difficult to convince the entire American population to think critically about elected officials. Either we need to hope that the only people to ever be good at using aesthetics use them for good like Mamdani, or we need a new system.
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