Ed Coper

We look at the differences we have that tear us apart.

And that's what happens in America.

You know, in a lot of states, your political identity is on your driver's license.

They wear their political identities much more openly and publicly than in Australia.

You will meet someone and they will proudly declare, I'm a Democrat, I'm a Republican.

I don't think I've ever met anyone in Australia upon their introduction who says, I'm a Liberal, I'm a Labor, I'm a Green.

That would be considered weird.

It would be weird in Australia.

And so we're likely to see each other as three-dimensional humans, not one-dimensional political caricatures.

Well, if you continuously assault people with things that are outrageous, with things that are outside the politically acceptable normal consensus, then they will not have a chance to engage with them meaningfully.

If you think about how politics used to work...

We had something called the Overton window, right?

We can only talk about things that are socially and politically acceptable, things that are within the Overton window.

And if anyone goes outside that window, then, you know, no one will listen to them.

Trump and Bannon have thrown that idea out the window.

Because the ability for them to say something so extreme and we scramble a response and we scramble a fact correction and mobilize the normal apparatus of responding to something that needs to be corrected.

And by the time you've done that, it's something else.

It's theatre.

It is spectacle.

It is spectacle designed to capture attention and it is designed to distract you from the things that you should be paying attention to.