Before 2016 the “info and culture wars” largely produced by commercial news outlets, whose bottom line is profits not truth, had already been injecting fuel into divisions and then cultivating them. Before four years of Trump in office, these divisions, in reality, were often expressed in very socially acceptable and almost friendly manner prior to the election in 2016.
Here, at the RNC convention in 2016, opposing folks, although enemies on a cultural and political level, could still maintain a sense of humor. Four years later, it was a war, complete with no compromises, and agit-prop solidified into misinformation, as so many media outlets literally took sides and, since its been turned into a war, all tactics especially misinformation becomes “justified” as in an actual war, until the anger boiled over into massive protests, riots, shootings and murder including numerous incidents of cars and trucks used as weapons to mow down people, a teenager running around a riot with an assault rifle he bought illegally with his covid stimulus check, and on and on.
And it all started with a coronation in Cleveland where opposing sides expressed themselves in political performances, each group surrounded and outnumbered by law enforcement groups from all over municipalities, counties and states across America.
Performance art would finally give way to riots, increased unity within groups and political action on the streets by the time of Trump’s last year in office.
Republican activist-legislators, like Matt Gaetz, use performance art and disruption, and 178 appearances on Fox news, to send his pro-Trump message, even wearing a gas mask at work, in Congress, during the height of the pandemic. It took four years for such folks to make it into the Capitol which has become such a performance art hotspot, especially on January 6, 2021, and the arrival of Marjorie Greene and the gun-loving creep from Colorado.