Sticky Situationists

America’s comic-book villain president is a reality TV star who has been in the public spotlight since the 1980s. Britain’s floppy-haired prime minister plays the bumbling posh man out of a 1990s romantic comedy. And Canada’s prime minister is a handsome failed actor who looks like an action hero — if they actually made action movies about Canadian prime ministers. In all three countries, politics is reduced to jingoist phrases about “the people” and “hard-working taxpayers,” as political leaders repeat their talking points in carefully rehearsed sound bites designed for the twenty-four-hour cable news cycle. At the grassroots, technologies once trumpeted for making politics more participatory have also made it more performative. Twitter hashtags, sign-­holding Facebook selfies, and Instagram stories are the new terrain of semiotic warfare. Public affairs are more mediated and more performative than ever before.

To get away from this disorienting landscape, we...