How the World Went from Post-Politics to Hyper-Politics
Democracy is essentially populist, because elites fight for votes through media. Parties optimize their selection process for those more suited to deal with public opinion.<p>Reaching as many votes as possible forces parties to draw their discourses around the lowest common denominator, which dumbs it down a lot.<p>The competition is fierce, so small by small step parties push the boundaries. There&#x27;s an inverse correlation between the results in the last election with the incentive to push the boundaries. So if you&#x27;re losing by a wide gap, dumb it down and appeal to emotions even more. Then your competition is forced to react, hopefully not quick enough.<p>I&#x27;ve been a consultant in a company for political parties for a brief period of time in my country, and the level of technification and specialization is on par, if not better, with the best marketing campaigns in the private sector. I laughed when I saw the scandal about cambridge Analytica. IDK in the US but in Spain microtargeting and segmented audiences were already being used by that time.<p>It didn&#x27;t feel right to me so I left before I made a year in it. It wasn&#x27;t only my job, it was the people I had to speak with, the feeling after the meetings that we were in the hands of completely idiot sociopaths.