If you don't live in the US, the events of this year's election might seem like the normal Presidential election circus. From my perspective, though, it is significantly different from prior elections, where the candidates in both parties were singing from the same neoliberal/neoconservative songbook and the mainstream media and New York/DC pundits played a significant role in setting the priorities and tone of the campaigns. Also, since the elections were a theatrical production, the audience/electorate took a passive role.
One of the huge differences in this year's election is that the corporate media monopoly has really been smashed by the Internet and the alternative media. I don't think the alt media is really that significant in shaping the tone or content of the discussion, rather simply by existing the alt media shows how completely arbitrary the status quo is. That is the policies of the United States over the past several decades, which are always couched in terms of absolute, divine goods, are revealed to be merely political and crafted to serve the interests of a small number of people. In short, the "philosophy" of the mainstream is only rhetoric. I think this theme pervades the entire election and is one of the reasons the mainstream is panicked, and is also one of the reasons the election seems to be so chaotic.
When arguments are revealed as empty rhetoric, and pundits are revealed as self-interested sophists, actual politics, that is, stupid meat-on-meat violence takes over. While the electorate still projects its hopes and dreams onto supposed "champions", like a Trump, Sanders, or Clinton, the people backing the candidates are beginning to clash.
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