My most eccentric opinion is my firm belief that the politicians we see through mass media are all mere actors projecting a fictional “government” that supposedly can be turned out in the next election if enough voters so desire. But I believe that the actual management of the government is conducted without cameras being present by personalities whose names are none of our business.

I can’t prove this assertion because the real action takes place out of sight.

Noodling over this frustrating state of affairs, I thought of Marshall McLuhan. I tried to read Understanding Media when I was in college half a century ago but never made it past page 40 or so as the text seemed like gibberish. Twenty years later, I bought a newly released reprint with a preface by Lewis Lapham of Harper’s Magazine. The internet was the Latest Thing at the time, and suddenly McLuhan was comprehensible.

As of this morning, I went goggling and found this entry that originated at the Encyclopedia Britanica:

Marshall McLuhan | Media theorist, Communication theorist, Cultural critic | Britannica

Marshall McLuhan (born July 21, 1911, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada—died Dec. 31, 1980, Toronto) was a Canadian communications theorist and educator, whose aphorism “the medium is the message” summarized his view of the potent influence of television, computers, and other electronic disseminators of information in shaping styles of thinking and thought, whether in sociology, art, science, or religion. He regarded the printed book as an institution fated to disappear.

McLuhan was associated with the University of Toronto from 1946 until 1979. He became full professor of English literature there in 1952 and was made director of the university’s Centre for Culture and Technology in 1963. He was also a popular lecturer.

In 1962 McLuhan published The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, the first of several books in which he examined communications and society. His other works include The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (with Quentin Fiore; 1967), From Cliché to Archetype (with Wilfred Watson; 1970), and City as Classroom (with Kathryn Hutchon and Eric McLuhan; 1977). McLuhan’s critical view of 20th-century society’s self-transformation made him one of the popular prophetic voices of his time.

What I recall from reading it in the 1990s, included the revelation (to me) that the invention of the printing press induced the utility of literacy, which had a democratizing effect on medieval civilization. Kings and priests no longer had a monopoly on information, and the masses began to realize their power, eventually leading to things like the French revolution.

In yet another ironic dimension to this exercise, the google entry on McLuhan includes this totally distinct subject matter entry:

Media dependency theory | Effects on Communications & Society | Britannica

Media dependency theory, a systematic approach to the study of the effects of mass media on audiences and of the interactions between media, audiences, and social systems. It was introduced in outline by the American communications researchers Sandra Ball-Rokeach and Melvin DeFleur in 1976.
Dependency theory conceives of dependency as a relationship in which the fulfillment of one party’s needs and goals is reliant on the resources of another party. A main focus of the theory is the relationship between media and audiences. In industrialized and information-based societies, individuals tend to develop a dependency on the media to satisfy a variety of their needs, which can range from a need for information on a political candidate’s policy positions (to help make a voting decision) to a need for relaxation and entertainment.

In general, the extent of the media’s influence is related to the degree of dependence of individuals and social systems on the media. Two of the basic propositions put forward by Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur are: (1) the greater the number of social functions performed for an audience by a medium (e.g., informing the electorate, providing entertainment), the greater the audience’s dependency on that medium, and (2) the greater the instability of a society (e.g., in situations of social change and conflict), the greater the audience’s dependency on the media and, therefore, the greater the potential effects of the media on the audience.

There are potentially three types of effects that result from an audience’s dependency on the media: cognitive, affective, and behavioral. Cognitive effects are changes in an audience’s attitudes, beliefs, and values, including changes brought about by the media in its role in political “agenda setting.” Affective effects include, for example, the development of feelings of fear and anxiety about living in certain neighbourhoods as a result of overexposure to news reports about violent events in such areas. An example of a behavioral effect is “deactivation,” which occurs when individual members of an audience refrain from taking certain actions that they would have taken had they not been exposed to certain messages from the media. Not voting in political elections may be such an effect.

Since its inception, media dependency theory has generated many cross-disciplinary studies. It has also served well as a theoretical basis for research in the domain of political-campaign communication, in which the relationship between the mass media, the electorate, and political candidates is a central focus.

OK, we have a society in which Left now means Woke and Right means MAGA. Take your pick.

Everybody agrees that the status quo sucks -- because of Them Other Guys. Personality rather than policy.