Viral Politics: The Hidden Cost to Democracy and Society

The digital political ad used a clip from the film Mean Girls to mock a public health official. Another turned a vice-presidential candidate into a punchline set to a pop song. This wasn’t from a rogue super PAC or a fringe account. It was posted by an official party committee on TikTok, presented as a legitimate communication to voters. Across the aisle, the opposing party’s feed is just as juvenile, zooming in on a candidate’s sweat or mocking an opponent with a meme about escaping a hospital. This is the new normal, and with another election approaching, its corrosive effect on American democracy is accelerating. The crisis isn’t about which side does it more. It’s that this performative contempt has become the dominant language of politics, moving from the shadows of social media to the center of our national debate.

This shift didn’t happen overnight. It was normalized on the biggest stage we have. The 2024 presidential debates, once a forum for substantive policy contrast, devolved into a exchange of personal insults. One candidate was likened to an “alley cat.” The other openly mocked his opponent’s age and mental acuity on live television. The rules tried to constrain it, with muted microphones, but the register was already set. As a veteran political correspondent, I’ve watched the tenor of these events degrade over two decades. What was once a breach of decorum is now a core strategy. It migrates from the debate lectern to the smartphone screen because it works. It generates the clicks, shares, and rage that fuel the modern attention economy. A Republican strategist close to Trump’s operation told Axios bluntly that the coming election would be a “hate election,” where victory depends on making voters “hate the Dems more than they hate us.” The goal is no longer to win on ideas, but to dominate through manufactured outrage.

The cost is a democracy stripped of its substance. When a public health official is cast as a teen movie villain and a vice-presidential pick is reduced to a meme, we are not having a debate about governance, public health, or national security. We are being trained to see politics as entertainment and our opponents as caricatures. Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, upon leaving office, cited her own role in this “toxic culture” as a reason for her departure. Her political evolution was reportedly cemented at a memorial service where the former president stated plainly, “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them.” This sentiment, once shameful, is now a marketed product. Every viral humiliation drowns out a real debate. Every meme-ified attack lowers the bar for what we accept from those seeking power.

Reversing this requires two uncomfortable shifts in responsibility. The first lies with the public. These tactics persist because they are rewarded. Clicking, sharing, or even hate-watching a contemptuous post is still engagement. It provides the data point that tells strategists to run it again. Voters hold immense, untapped power by simply withdrawing that reward. The principle at stake isn’t partisan; it’s whether our public square remains a contest of ideas or becomes a permanent spectacle designed to keep us angry and distracted. As I tell my own family when they forward these videos, feeding the outrage machine only makes it stronger.

The second, and more difficult, shift must come from within the political class itself. The tactic loses all force when a politician’s own allies refuse to tolerate it. This requires courage that will cost them in the short term. It means declining the easy viral attack, even when it might poll well. It means calling out juvenile and dehumanizing behavior from one’s own side, not just the opposition. Politicians have a professional duty to redirect this engineered sensation back to the buried issues: inflation, healthcare, national security. They must treat official party accounts as instruments for communication, not weapons of mass derision.

With the midterms approaching, the incentive to inflame is at its peak. The danger is that a tactic adopted for its efficiency becomes a permanent feature. Each cycle risks being more debased than the last. Decades ago, scholar Francis Fukuyama theorized about liberal democracy being the “final form” of human government. That confidence seems misplaced today. What should trouble us most is that democracy’s own practitioners are now undermining it from within, not with coups or violence, but with a relentless drip of contempt packaged for viral consumption. They are proving Fukuyama wrong for reasons he never anticipated. The endpoint of this evolution isn’t triumph, but trivialization. Our democracy is being memed to death, one click at a time.

• Perpetual Mockery
• Lack of Substance
• Juvenile Tactics
• Manufactured Outrage
• Civic Engagement
• Undermining Democracy