The further we get from the places where we have influence in our daily lives — the people we can truly reach as individuals because they know us — the more we focus on electoral politics.
We think a lot about our friends we see regularly but don’t think about our local regular politics. We see this most in our voter participation in local elections, which is always lower than in Presidential elections.
We spend far more time thinking about who the President is or will be than about who our mayor is, especially if we live in a suburban, mid-sized town with little regional news coverage. Ironically, local government is the level that has the most impact on our daily lives, and where we, as engaged individuals, can have the greatest influence.
This is the insidious effect that television — especially cable television — has had on our politics. There was a time when our understanding of politics came primarily from our local newspaper. These papers covered national news, but it often arrived days later, gathered from wire reports or other newspapers.
The advent of national radio networks in the 20th century brought national news alongside local coverage. Then came national television networks, followed by cable TV, which introduced the modern attention economy.
For a moment, the internet seemed poised to re-localize the news. But the rise of algorithm-driven content silos instead democratized the ethos of cable television. This shift created a “bottom-up, top-down” content factory, perfected by election deniers but emblematic of the broader economy of outrage and rumor.
The people we see and interact with daily are the ones who truly listen to us and value what we say. These local, social networks offer the most opportunity for meaningful influence and positive impact. Yet, we spend more energy worrying about the opinions of people who will never meet us.
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