The Current Situation of 2025: Thoughts on Media, the Public Sphere, and Education

Abstract: This article examines the evolution of the public sphere in the United States from the Civil War era to 2025. It argues that a revolution in mass media, marked by increasing consolidation and targeted manipulation, has enabled recent political shifts, including those taking place in the Trump administration's second term. The article explains how the "bourgeois public sphere," a concept introduced by Jürgen Habermas, could be transformed from a place of open debate into a "consuming public," eventually leading to a blurring of news and advertising; Habermas saw this occur in Germany in the period before World War II. This article argues that this transformation has been taking place since the 1980s, with some similarities to a partial transformation in the 1870s. Finally, the document connects this media transformation to the current attacks on university education, portraying universities as targets in a partisan "diploma divide."