The Political Spectacle is the idea of how politicians can manipulate public opinions and actions by diverting attention from more pressing social and political issues such as poverty, climate change, and racial inequalities. Many politicians take advantage of social constructs to draw attention to foreign threats. By doing so, they skillfully lessen the attention on domestic concerns. External threats tend to appeal to broader audiences and feed the fears of less informed individuals, whereas domestic problems seem to be focused on smaller sub-sets of individuals in a society. (Edelman, Pg. 28). One example of an ongoing political spectacle would be seen as Donald J. Trump and his rise as the P.O.T.U.S. Trump utilized the playbook of political
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Edelman explores the idea of how ideology changes for politicians based on their needs to mold public opinion. He makes a good point to illustrate how Americans really have no interest in political ideology or the political spectrum in general. Politics in America have become nothing more than a pissing match between liberals and conservatives. A good example of an ideology would be socialism. Although there are several types of socialist systems, the most relevant of the set are based off the work of Marx and Engels. When discussing socialism today in America we have seen fierce debate on whether political leaders are basing their ideas off socialist ideology. One example is Bernie Sanders. He has been slammed by the Republican party on what some would say is a socialist …show more content…
This is one example of how politicians and the government use displacement. It is much easier to blame a religion, ideology or foreign government because the public is generally uneducated on the facts of the situation or the people involved. This has been done throughout history and many wars have been fault on the false premise of outside threats. People are generally afraid of that they do not understand. Motivations such as financial gains for the military industrial complex have been touted as being one of the most prevalent reasons for the Vietnam
Edelman explores the idea of how ideology changes for politicians based on their needs to mold public opinion. He makes a good point to illustrate how Americans really have no interest in political ideology or the political spectrum in general. Politics in America have become nothing more than a pissing match between liberals and conservatives. A good example of an ideology would be socialism. Although there are several types of socialist systems, the most relevant of the set are based off the work of Marx and Engels. When discussing socialism today in America we have seen fierce debate on whether political leaders are basing their ideas off socialist ideology. One example is Bernie Sanders. He has been slammed by the Republican party on what some would say is a socialist …show more content…
This is one example of how politicians and the government use displacement. It is much easier to blame a religion, ideology or foreign government because the public is generally uneducated on the facts of the situation or the people involved. This has been done throughout history and many wars have been fault on the false premise of outside threats. People are generally afraid of that they do not understand. Motivations such as financial gains for the military industrial complex have been touted as being one of the most prevalent reasons for the Vietnam