An interesting development in the 2016 Presidential Election, is the presumption of candidates whom are funded by major donors, and not directly by citizens, as being representatives of the “Establishment”. What is interesting about this viewpoint is that it is an example of a mass amnesia phenomena, or “Societal Amnesia”.
The same as all sociological phenomena, Societal Amnesia possibly has a psychological precedent in the first Society, the Family. Societal Amnesia is possibly the Social version of Childhood Amnesia, that started with Infant Amnesia. Therefore, Oedipal Complex-like drives found in Societal Amnesia events are expected.
Before the 2008 Presidential Election, both Democrat and Republican candidates would obtain most of their campaign funding from major donors. Funding of political campaigns directly from the voters would have been an expensive effort involving mass mailings, paper checks, and non-automated accounting.
Soliciting campaign funds via the internet didn’t exist before the 2008 Presidential Election campaigns. Even in 2008, Barack Obama’s campaign was the only campaign to rely on funding via Social Media and the Internet. John McCain’s campaign, and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, seemed reluctant to include the new technologies of communication, (and monetary transfer), that had become available in only 2 to 5 years before 2008.
Before the Barack Obama presidential election campaign in 2008, all candidates were funded by major donors. Even after 2008, many politicians, (Republicans and Democrats), continue relying on traditional methods of fundraising from major donors, (i.e. corporate/union donors).
During the 8 years from 2008 to 2016, Social Media has become even more popular, and Internet technologies have become more sophisticated. A new generation of voters have become adults at the same time that internet technologies have become more accepted in the processes of individual’s daily lives.
By 2016, advocates of political fundraising via the internet have refined their methods, and use of Social Media has gained in leverage for fundraising, and political advertising. Social Media, and the Internet, have also caused a vast amount of voters to forget the precedents from the past 214 years of Presidential Elections. Interestingly, many voters now assign honest motivations to the candidate that uses direct communications/fundraising, and dishonest motivations to candidates that use traditional pre-internet political methods.
Therefore, in 2016, the Bernie Sanders campaign raises money, and politically organizes via Social Media, as the Hillary Clinton campaign is still using her major donor connections from the past 24 years, (like all Democrat candidates before Obama). At this point in time, the phenomena of Societal Amnesia has taken over, causing a vast amount of persons, (many of them new voters), to become emotionally invested in the technological Generation Gap of internet politics, and forget the actual issues of the political campaigns. Bernie Sanders is assigned honest motivations, based on use of new internet technologies. Hillary Clinton is assigned dishonest motivations, because of practicing the only form of Politics in existence before the internet.
Without the effects of Societal Amnesia regarding Social Media political fundraising, the 2016 Presidential Election campaigns would possibly have more accurate reasoning by the populace, in terms of perceptions of sympathy towards the population, by the candidates.