"One of these differences is the sheer number of basic societal functionsthatpeople are aware of, and forced to have opinions about, within the realm of politics. Think about COVID and the way everything worked or didn't work while it was at its peak. Think about the crash course in vote tabulation and Electoral College procedure that followed. Think about what has happened in the past nine months-a sort of national unscrewing of the parts on the furniture."
"We're in the midst of an effort to turn pretty much every entity that once maintained a certain "normal" and nonpartisan order of operations into one that acts for the benefit, and at the direction, of a specific political party and its leader. In effect, we have spent the past five years as a society examining the gears that make us move. It's been a slow-motion drug trip of noticing things that were always there."
A staff writer concludes an 11-year tenure after covering a tumultuous era marked by deep political polarization. Many basic societal functions have become subjects of political opinion and scrutiny, from pandemic response to election procedures. Recent months have seen an active effort to restructure institutions, turning formerly nonpartisan bureaucracies and commercial entities toward partisan ends. Over the past five years, public awareness has broadened, revealing underlying mechanisms of governance and commerce. The period has felt like a prolonged, disorienting uncovering of long-standing systems and assumptions about how things work.
Read at Slate Magazine
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]