Part of the problem is the atomization of society. We’ve have vanishingly few truly public spaces to build the kind of connections with people necessary to form shared political causes. People spend most of their lives either:
In their private homes, suspicious of anyone who tries to interact with them there.
In private workplaces where management surveils employees and tries to stop organized activity.
In private businesses where you are only welcome as individual consumers.
Online on platforms that are privately owned and designed to manipulate behavior and social interactions towards interacting with more advertising. Controversy is only allowed to the extent that it gets more eyeballs on ads and doesn’t upset advertisers.
Back when I was more involved in electoral politics, I found it extraordinarily difficult to reach out to people to organize them, either because they were in spaces where political campaigning wasn’t allowed or because they have become distrustful of strangers.
It’s suffocating any kind of broader public consciousness and I don’t really know what to do about it.