And profiting from it
Reactions to Charlie Kirk’s assassination followed predictable patterns. Leaders of both major parties issued statements condemning the violence and offered condolences to Kirk’s young family.
“Below that seethed the eternal, inescapable culture war, each side excoriating the other,” Andrew Egger writes at The Bulwark. “It barely mattered how representative of their broader political cohorts these posters were; every American’s social-media algorithms made sure they got to see whichever ones would make them maddest.”
That is in itself a problem capitalism cannot and will not address. All the incentives in the attention economy support addicting social media users to agitation, anger, and resentment. Therein lies profit, dividends, career advancement. Not to pursue those is a crime against capitalism, a term found nowhere in our country’s founding documents. William Hogeland makes clear in “The Hamilton Scheme: An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American Founding” that below the founders’ lofty rhetoric and the framers’ revolutionary government design, wealth accumulation drove men like Hamilton as much as idealistic concepts of equality for some.
Capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction, Marx believed. But they grow slowly. We are reaping the harvest 250 years and a lot of technology and a widening wealth gap later.
There is also a widening gap in the behaviors on display between two major cable networks. Stockholders of both expect profits. But one constructed its business model directly on making its viewers angry and keeping them stewing. It’s turned Orwell’s Two Minutes Hate into 24-hour programming.
Egger observes:
Over on MSNBC, just minutes after the shooting, pundit Matthew Dowd ghoulishly rushed to lay the blame at Kirk’s own feet: “I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.” (He was later fired from the network.) On Fox News, Jesse Watters seemed ready to anoint Kirk the first martyr of the second U.S. Civil War: “Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us. And what are we going to do about it?” (He was not fired by his network.)
Firing Watters wouldn’t be profitable.
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