Today I had an epiphany about politics. It’s so obvious and so simple, yet it didn’t coalesce into just now.
What is politics, what are political parties, what are candidates and their positions and platforms and speeches and policies and promises?
Nothing but a best-effort to give you exactly what you want to hear.
I mean: entertainment. A show. A performance for an audience, where the actors and producers are attempting as best as possible to give the viewers what will satisfy them. This is a form of capitalism and commerce. They sell you the experiences that make you think and feel “ooh yes this is what I like” and then you ‘pay’ them for it (you go vote, or at least keep investing in the overall system, keep giving them your data and ad revenue, etc.)
Politics has devolved into nothing but theater and showmanship, the ongoing attempt to always improve how they can capture your emotions, attention, values in order to give you (sell you) something, an idea and an image–a set of experiences–so that you continue to feed the beast. So you continue to invest yourself in the system and uphold its supposed legitimacy.
Whether on the right or left, you can see this happening. All they do is try to produce content that appeases and aligns with and satisfies as many people on their side as possible. None of it actually has much to do with anything in reality. Trump voters somehow think he will save them, keep his promises? They already forgot 2016-2020 when he didn’t do shit and broke most of those promises. And everyone knows the demonrats are 100 times worse.
Naw… we live under a uniparty. That much everyone should be capable of seeing, at least. But the real insight that hit me was the absolute theatrics of it, and how openly naked this is now. Everything is like a live Netflix show unfolding in real time. We are the audience and they are the show producers and actors. All they care about is giving us something we want, something that satisfies us for the moment, even if that satisfaction takes the form of mob violence or just a quiet emotional outrage. Fear and horror of course do the trick too.
The world has become a live action show in progress, at least when it comes to politics and most things that come to you curated through forms of media. Mass media in TV and radio, social media, these are all carefully constructed products. And you get your ‘ideas’ from these sources. And then you think they are actually your own thoughts and conclusions.
Anyway, this isn’t about all that. It is simply about the stunningly obvious fact that politics has become nothing more than theatrical showmanship in order to sell you a product you will hopefully enjoy. Most people are stuck in this system, a literal Matrix for their minds. So what happened to real politics? We are not ignorant, we know politics was always like this in some ways and forms. But until recently real human authenticity still played a part, there were still open spaces within the game, real work being done. Limits to what raw inhuman power could rot away. But that was before the system achieved true panopticon status. Now we all stare into our little screens and download whatever ideas and perspectives we are supposed to download. Right or left, you feel how they made you feel, you think how they made you think and you do what they made you do.
The best kind of mind control is the kind the victim has no idea is even there.