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The Great Reopening Performance

Cass Wilder — Wed, 20 May 2020 16:20:00 +0000

May 2020 didn’t just reopen businesses, it staged a declaration: we’re done with this. But reopening became symbols and vibes instead of systems, pushing enforcement downhill to the lowest-paid workers and turning public health into identity theatre. A performance asks you to believe. A plan asks you to trust, and trust has to be earned.

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Reopening Without Repair

E. H. Mercer — Fri, 08 May 2020 15:47:00 +0000

The push to reopen is real, and so is the pain behind it. But reopening is not a switch. It is an allocation of risk, and without repair, it becomes a transfer of burden onto the least protected. Rules that aren’t enforced become theatre, trust becomes the second casualty, and “freedom” turns into a slogan that excuses avoidable harm.

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The Republic in Quarantine

E. H. Mercer — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 17:36:00 +0000

March 2020 is a stress test, not only of hospitals and supply chains, but of the democratic habits that keep power accountable when fear is in the air. Emergencies expand authority, fracture trust, and tempt leaders to treat transparency as optional. A republic can survive quarantine. The question is whether its standards can.

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January 2020: Attention Begins to Shift

Politiglue — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 15:23:00 +0000

Early signals consolidate into a story with shape. Institutions adjust cautiously, media reframes, and attention begins to move inward. January 2020 introduces doubt without yet declaring crisis.

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Notification Nation

Cass Wilder — Sun, 19 Jan 2020 01:24:00 +0000

In January 2020, politics doesn’t arrive as a newspaper or an evening broadcast. It arrives as a push alert. The attention economy has reshaped civic life into an endless stream of click-shaped urgency, rewarding visibility over integrity and reaction over reflection. The result isn’t just polarization. It’s a citizenry trained to live without “later.”

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The Permission Structure of 2020

E. H. Mercer — Tue, 07 Jan 2020 16:05:00 +0000

America didn’t enter 2020 with a reset. It entered with momentum, and momentum is what politics looks like when standards have already been weakened. From escalating conflict abroad to a Senate trial that feels prewritten, the real danger is not a single event. It’s the permission structure we build when accountability becomes optional and precedent becomes habit.

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The Year the Feed Learned Your Triggers

Cass Wilder — Sun, 22 Dec 2019 09:10:00 +0000

December 2019 closes with impeachment, primaries, and a country that feels permanently on edge. But the deeper story isn’t just what happened. It’s how the feed trained us to consume politics in fragments, perform identity, and treat constant emergency as normal. Before 2020 arrives as a “reset,” it’s worth asking what the attention economy has already rewritten in us.

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December 2019: Signals Without a Name

Politiglue — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 15:00:00 +0000

Year-end routines take over as institutions slow for the holidays. Small signals appear at the edges of attention, but there is no shared narrative yet, only information without urgency.

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The Center Cannot Hold, but It Can Be Rebuilt

E. H. Mercer — Sun, 15 Dec 2019 09:10:00 +0000

December 2019 closes with the House voting to impeach President Trump and the Senate poised for a trial whose ending seems prewritten. But the real stakes are larger than one outcome. The question is what we will tolerate, what precedents we will normalize, and whether a republic can survive an attention economy that rewards contempt over standards.

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