If propaganda isn’t new, why do we feel this way?

This article is part of a series of thinking examining modern media and our civic life including my new book For ALL the People coming Feb 23, 2021.

In this post-election, year-end period of reflection, we are seeing dozens of jeremiads and manifestos rising from all corners and comers. What does this election mean? What will a Biden Administration make possible? Is Trumpism dead? Can society survive mis/disinformation? We’re wrestling with big, fundamental questions about the nature of human society, our social contract, the future of capitalism (and even whether our understanding of its history is accurate), the efficacy of small “d” democratic civic life in the face of modern media seemingly designed to undermine it.

So much of the diagnosis of what has made our politics feel mean and our civic life border on pointless are rightly rooted in the stories we tell and the media systems we leverage to build community in the twenty-first century. I have been wrestling with similar questions since the initial collision of America presidential politics and modern media during the 2008 Obama for America campaign. As one of the products of the last decade of my work, I have written a book in an attempt to explore why we are where we are, how we got here, and if we want a civic life that feeds our best instincts and makes community vibrant and possible, where we go from here.

In hopes of adding something to the debate about American democracy in the information age — through the lens…