The Age of Trump has assaulted and undermined America’s governing institutions and the rule of law, civil society, and shared sense of normalcy. Beginning to heal these many great challenges, as President Obama and Michelle Obama implored last month in Chicago, will take much hard work. In total, it will be a project of democratic renewal that will last decades and not just one debate or election cycle. Doing the work of democratic and civic renewal will require that the American people develop a different relationship to time.
The attention economy with its endless and empty “content” and algorithms is how the late capitalist experience machine distracts and profits. This dynamic of constant stimulation in an age of spectacle has contributed to epidemic rates of loneliness, social atomization, depression and other mental and emotional unwellness. We've seen a decline in the type of social capital essential for a healthy democracy. How can the American people and their leaders do the work of reinvigorating democracy and defeating Trumpism and the larger neofascist threat if average attention spans have been greatly decreasing over the last two decades?
Doing the work of democratic and civic renewal will require that the American people develop a different relationship to time.
For example, research shows that the average American’s ability to focus on a computer screen has decreased from 2.5 minutes in the early 2000s to 45 or so seconds today. Other research suggests that many Americans can only pay attention to one task for 8 seconds — that is less than a goldfish.
For decades, the American news media with its endless 24/7 coverage, sensationalism, traffic-chasing, and an “if it bleeds it leads” ethos has contributed to this problem instead of intervening against it. The Age of Trump has been enabled and normalized by that behavior and how the corrupt felonious traitor sexual assaulter as confirmed by a court of law ex-president is worth billions of dollars in advertising revenue to the news media.
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Anton Jäger describes this late capitalist media and political environment with its rejection of substantive mass politics in favor of empty identity politics and performance, with its “brands” and virtue-signaling to get attention on social media and across the digital space as an example of “hyper-politics”:
“hyper-politics” is what happens when post-politics ends — something like furiously stepping on the gas with an empty tank. Questions of what people own, and........