Omicron and governance theater
"In the 2020s, Science has killed more people than Hitler."

governance theater displaces actual governance

In the West, where power depends on either managing or following public opinion, the idea of actual governance is almost unfamiliar.
The wise experts who manage the public mind have one school of governance theater;
the cynical sycophants who milk the populist mob have another.
Both of these schools are fundamentally adapted for audience appeal, which is why they are schools not of policy, but of theater.

If our levers of power are held by the managers of public opinion, ie professors and journalists, we are an oligarchy (“liberal democracy”).
If they are held by the servants of public opinion, ie politicians, we.are a democracy (“authoritarian populism”).

When this choice between oligarchy and democracy becomes a choice between weird, unhinged governance theater, and weird, unhinged governance theater,
we really start to regret that there are only two forms of government.
Clearly, we are just doomed.