I was with you until the manufactured crisis part, I think you just want the electorate to care about a different set of issues and so you downplay them as not important in general when really they’re just not important to you. The most recent media spirals are another school shooting refueling the gun control fight, overturning Roe, and the Don’t Say Gay bill all of which have real life impact on people’s lives.

Like what do you think the “demanding” is going to look like if not an emotional frenzy and protests?

The reason Roe v Wade is being pushed is that a small number of people in power see who don't care about it one way or the other push/pushed opposition to it because getting that base emotionally charged gets people more engaged with the party. It is entirely opportunistically taking advantage of an issue to drive the conversation away from other issues. It's not that abortion is unimportant, it's that without certain politics motivations, it would just be solved and generally allowed and not particularly large on anybody's mind.

You find this all over and have to question about each issue that is emotionally charged... how does fanning the flames help certain parties and politicians? Likewise for news sources.

There's an incentive partially intentional by those pulling the strings and partially emergent (or a stand-alone complex for Ghost in the Shell fans) phenomenon where by in a intentional/emergent collusion between parties, politicians, media, and individuals... the most emotionally charged issues dominate the political landscape these days because from somebody seeking out the emotional rush of a like to a politician winning elections to corporate news advertisement sales there are benefits everywhere to make people frenzy about something, and whatever is most apt for it gets it, regardless if rationally it's a solved issue that only a few hangers on really want to fight about any more.

>Like what do you think the “demanding” is going to look like if not an emotional frenzy and protests?

There's a real core of the problem, inability to imagine what meaningful political discourse would look like without an emotional frenzy.

I feel like this is a really cynical take for “the issues that dominate the news cycle are ones where there is roughly even political power backing a given position and so small perturbations in territory result in large policy swings.” It became a wedge issue and you’re right politicians are absolutely taking advantage but people do genuinely seem to care a whole heck of a lot about the outcome. I don’t think people are as disinterested as you think. Like literally every woman I know, myself included, is at most 1 Bacon distance from someone who had an abortion.

> it would just be solved

You can’t say “god why are we still taking about this, can’t we just do the_thing_i_want and call it a day?” Because obviously there would be a lot less political strife if we all just agreed or put up with outcomes we don’t like.