You’re never going to be able to understand modern politics until you stop ignoring the role that the medium of communication plays. People today spend truly massive amounts of time immersed in various forms of media - mostly online! The narratives and dynamics of this media shapes their world.
No one wants to talk about this, especially left of center, because they’re ideologically fixated on the idea that people are responding to material conditions, or else are free-thinking, independent agents in the marketplace of ideas.
The notion that people are so much flotsam being pushed around by a narrative tide in these massive communication forum gets rejected out of hand - “Ha, are you saying nobody thinks for themselves? Are you saying people can’t perceive reality?”
Yes! What in history makes you believe otherwise?
All of history is people believing outrageous falsehoods because those falsehoods were widely or universally echoed in their community. What do you think happens when those communities become mass media, and then unregulated mass media shaped almost entirely the imperative of online virality?
Nobody on the left wants to admit this because it denigrates their own views from righteous awakening to just as group-thinky as the MAGA, which doesn't change a thing about which one is morally better but feels like it does, chips away at feelings of superiority
