The 'Context' in Political Discourse

What I learned from running for County Council

Hey everyone, welcome back.

Last week, I talked about the books, writing, and thinking that had most influenced my life last year. Today, I want to go back to my experience in the primary for Greenville County Council.

Reflecting on the experience, I’ve realized how vividly it brought to life the ideas we often explore here: how the medium shapes the message, how we create symbols and infuse them with meaning, and how we come to “know” what we know. Running for office turned these abstract concepts into real-world challenges, especially when navigating the main “town squares” of our era—social media platforms—and the limitations they impose on meaningful conversation.

Most political discussions today happen online, and there’s a clear benefit: People who might never have participated in public discourse can now join the conversation, weigh in, and make their voices heard. However, the drawbacks are profound because these platforms strip context from discussions, reducing their depth and utility.

Imagine overhearing this at an airport:

Person 1: "Did you make sure it’s ready? We can’t afford to mess this up."
Person 2: "Yes, it’s all set. It’ll go off exactly as planned."

Without context, this exchange could be interpreted as anything from mundane to catastrophic. What you don’t know is that these individuals are event planners talking about a conference reveal, not something sinister. This example illustrates a simple but crucial point: context is everything.

Social media, by design, removes context. Facebook groups, Twitter (or X), and Instagram don’t provide the space or structure for nuanced conversations. Instead, they create fragmented discussions that bounce between topics without resolution. I was tagged in countless threads during my campaign and asked to weigh in on various issues. I’d take the time to compose thoughtful responses, only for the conversation to move on—or loop back around when someone else raised the same topic slightly differently. Over time, repeating the same context became exhausting and unsustainable.

And then there are the “drive-by” comments—one-liners or inflammatory statements dropped into the conversation before the commenter disappears, leaving no room for meaningful dialogue. These moments, encouraged by the platforms’ engagement-driven algorithms, derail any chance at productive discussion. Platforms reward the short, snippy, attention-grabbing content, while thoughtful, nuanced posts often go unnoticed.

This creates a difficult choice: simplify complex issues so much that they lose meaning or provide complete, accurate context and hope someone takes the time to engage. Local problems—often the most impactful but least glamorous—have a limited audience. Add the challenges of the medium, and it’s no wonder substantive conversations are so rare.

As we’ve discussed, the medium is the message, and today’s digital media are reshaping how and what we can talk about. Running for office made this reality inescapably clear. While I didn’t win, the lessons I learned about communication, community, and the limits of our current platforms will inform everything I do.

Alan Jacobs in How To Think talks about how “it is not possible to ‘think for yourself’ in the sense of thinking independently of others; and… how the pressures imposed on us by Inner Rings [see C. S. Lewis] make genuine thinking almost impossible by making belonging contingent on conformity.” The rage-inducing dynamics of social media can become a performance to prove conformity. Jacobs goes on to note:

The only real remedy for the dangers of false belonging is the true belonging to, true membership in, a fellowship of people who are not so much like-minded as like-hearted.¹

A bit later, he adds, while describing a closed Twitter/X community he built,

These people… are not necessarily like-minded, but they are temperamentally disposed to openness and have habits of listening–and in that sense are wonderfully like-hearted.²

Even in online communities, where all the incentives are pushing against us, prudence and civility are choices we can make. As we move into 2025, I hope you will consider how the communities you are around are affecting your thinking. Do you find yourself in an echo chamber, with your acceptance contingent on conformity, or are you more interested in anti-fragile relationships that can bear the weight of disagreement?

Thanks for reading, and as always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Social image by John Schnobrich on Unsplash

1. How to Think, Alan Jacobs, pg. 62

2. How to Think, Alan Jacobs, pg. 63