Like it or not, social media, and right now Twitter specifically, is the future of communication between politicians and the public. You are standing on the cutting edge of communication. (Personally, I detest Twitter, but I probably should give in and embrace it.) Donald Trump isn’t the first one to use it, but he is the first one to refine its use and make it effective for his own purposes. Targeted tweets (Vin Scully once called them “twits”, LOL!!!, so innocently appropriate) telling people on his side what they want to hear. And while the other side will inevitably react, he’s not really doing it for them, at least not as much.
Mr Trump can rattle off tweets, each one different from the last, in a seemingly uncoordinated fashion if you were to read them all together, but this strategy does have a certain logic to it. Reality is that people hear only two things… that which they want to hear so they can tout it and agree with it, and that which they vehemently disagree with so they can act all outraged… which gains the tweeter even more attention. For being a dolt, Trump does have a handle on this. He knows that everything else will be filtered out by the individual audience members.
Younger politicians are catching on, too. For all of you who decry everything Trump does as somehow immoral and/or unethical, politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) are doing the… exact… same… thing. Their strategy is pretty much identical. They’re bypassing the media, they’re bypassing their party, they’re going directly to the people with their own message and framing it to their liking, not filtered by the biases of the 3rd wheel reporter. Don’t criticize Trump for this unless you’re willing to be fair and criticize her, as well.
Think about it, how many times have you said or thought, “I wish we could hear what a politician really thinks.”? Well, now you can, and sometimes it’s kind of scary, isn’t it? At least sobering. I will continue to point out when a politician is being a moron, as both examples above are extreme whack-job fringes of their respective ideologies, and are prone to be moronic, but this is our foreseeable political future. It’s quite possibly actually a good thing. Be grateful.
You’ve seen it before. The person who, when some business does something they disapprove, makes it a point to let everyone know that that’s when they stopped patronizing said business. Boycotts are very trendy right now, and seldom effective. For every person who stops purchasing a product, someone else steps in and starts, for the same reasons as you, only the opposite side.
Politics anymore is reactionary, not thoughtful and reasoned. Example: I really don’t get all the hatred for Obama. To start, I’m sorry, but I don’t buy that it’s because he’s black. The ONLY people I ever heard make a big deal out of him being black are people looking for racism anywhere they can find it so they could point it out, almost as if that’s what they wanted, it gave them purpose. The rest of us, whenever we would engage in anything political, his race/ethnicity never came up. Yes, there are some who have racist views toward the man and in general, but really the vast majority honestly don’t gave a crap. That probably shatters your world view, but ok, irrational knee-jerk world views are part of the problem.