Something snapped this year. The establishment press: networks, papers, late-night marquee names split right down the middle. On one side stand the realists: four decades of flat wages, three asset bubbles, an opioid holocaust, and a botched pandemic response have convinced them the neoliberal era is over. They hear the funeral bells.
On the other side, the stage lights are still up. Its avatar is Stephen Colbert, frozen in the belief that the only thing wrong with America is that it contains people who don’t watch Stephen Colbert. Every populist tremor gets the same four-step routine: smirk, fact-check, musical number, lecture. The audience left the theater years ago; Colbert thinks they’re just in the lobby buying MAGA hats.
Australia is following the script line for line. No single domestic outlet now reaches every voter bloc political parties need. Audiences have splintered into like-minded channels, dissolving any “national conversation.” The split is no longer left versus right; it is humility versus hubris, those who recognize neo-liberalism’s sunset and those still waiting for the laugh track that never comes.
