There's an unreality about this political moment. It makes it hard to hold people's attention, to create any kind of focus on any issue or event or action. People don't know what's real, what's certain, what's not just for dumb show.

And that is both by design, and the output, of totalitarian thinking. Aesthetics are ever-present in politics - the color of a suit, or whether someone even wears one can fill a news cycle and constitute a scandal. Fascist and authoritarian ideologies are aesthetic all the way down. They are both authentically held by people who can not tolerate discomfort with themselves, other people, the way things are, or the way things seem to be headed... and they are a convenient cover for people who have real material goals and know that spectacle will dazzle people long enough for them to get away with just about anything.

And this has me obsessing about one of my favorite books, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and working through it in a conversation with Cy Canterel, a feral scholar, TikToker, and writer who thinks a lot about systems, aesthetics, sense-making, and how it all works.

In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's killing, I reached out to Cy to talk about kitsch - something she has written about, and about her concept of a Hater's Discourse, and how this might explain the moment we're currently in.

And then I revisited some of that conversation after the incursion into Venezuela and the murder of Renee Nicole Good. It felt like the right time to talk about this, given that it seems like we're all struggling with how to reckon with real things that seem fake.

Some links for your enjoyment:

Cy's piece on Kitsch: https://open.substack.com/pub/cybelecanterel/p/lost-in-the-kingdom-of-kitsch

Cy's piece on the Hater's Discourse: https://cybelecanterel.substack.com/p/a-haters-discourse

Cy's video on Blackpill Aesthetics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcw02sEslog

Ryan Broderick's piece on Garbage Day, "The Rise of the Troll State": https://www.garbageday.email/p/the-rise-of-the-troll-state

Don Moynihan's piece on Can We Still Govern?, "Life Under a Clicktocracy": https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/life-under-a-clicktatorship

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📍 Produced by The Difference Engine

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Conor Kilgore is a producer of The Focus Group Podcast, and a qualitative researcher at Longwell Partners - and he joined host Farrah Bostic to discuss the value of listening to real people talk about their real beliefs and experiences in their own words. And he brought clips! We also discussed his journey into this work via work on political campaigns, and got as deep into the weeds as possible on how they do what they do.

Subscribe to The Bulwark here: https://www.thebulwark.com

Subscribe to The Focus Group Podcast here: https://www.thebulwark.com/s/thefocusgroup

Find out more about Longwell Partners here: https://www.longwellpartners.com

And find out more about Conor here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/conorkilgore/

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📹 Watch video episodes on YouTube @CrosstabsPodcast

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📍 Produced by The Difference Engine

📨 You can also email me directly at farrah@crosstabspodcast.com

Keeping up our monthly Mood Swings discussion of polling and political strategy news that enrages, confuses, and inspires, host Farrah Bostic and guest Lauren Goldstein discuss the Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, which explores American voters' opinions on a wide range of current events. We discussed the question types, answer options, and interpretation of the fairly extensive data - and beg researchers to remember how important it is to provide respondents with 'not sure' or 'don't care' or 'never heard of it' options to gauge true public sentiment.

We also talked about how brands deal with trends or issues that might be salient - but also controversial.

And this month's What's Good focused on the power of satire, humor, and fighting content with content.

Our Guest

Lauren Goldstein is the lead advocacy pollster for Change Research and holds a PhD from UCLA with ten years of experience as a public opinion researcher and social scientist. She has done extensive research and polling on issues related to racial justice (and injustice), criminal legal reform and police divestment, immigration, and reproductive rights. She is the author of the Mind the Gap newsletter.

What we were talking about was...

• Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll December 2025 - https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/HHP_Dec2025_KeyFindings.pdf
• Jordan Klepper Fingers the Pulse: Give the Man a Prize - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdvSonnYw-E
• "The hidden axis: the left-right spectrum has a non-ideology problem" by G. Elliott Morris, Strength in Numbers - https://www.gelliottmorris.com/p/not-just-left-vs-right-most-voters

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📍 Produced by The Difference Engine