Good Thursday Morning, Fellow Seekers.
There’s always been a performative aspect to our politics. If you’re an elected official who wants to keep your job, it’s often as important to be seen doing something about The Big Problems as it is to actually do something about them.
But over the last few years, the balance of power between the performative and practical in our politics has tipped away from a focus on measurable accomplishments to one that’s content to simply win the next news cycle, no matter what the cost.
The shift has been, it should be noted, more or less bipartisan. But, in all the ways that count, from propagating the myth of the stolen election to mask and pandemic denialism, Republicans have been the predominant practitioners of this reinvigorated, and destructively corrosive, theatricality.
You don’t have to look much further for confirmation of that than this week’s announcement by the majority-GOP state House
