Why We Need Memes to Understand Politics in 2016

Hillary Clinton made history the other day: for the first time, one of America's two main political parties has selected as its presidential candidate an entirely fictional character. Didn't you notice? Hillary is Khaleesi. Yes, the one from Game of Thrones , the petulant asbestos-skinned herpetoculturist from a stupid fantasy kingdom, the one that's entirely made up.

Hillary Clinton is Khaleesi.

Hillary Clinton is Khaleesi.

Hillary Clinton is Khaleesi.

Hillary Clinton is Khaleesi.

Did you really think this was the real world you were living in? This is TV. You're stuck here forever.

To be fair, it's not a terrible comparison. Neither Hillary Clinton nor Daenerys Targaryen can get Berned; they are both the heirs to a mad and destructive political dynasty; they both consider themselves born to rule, innately superior to everyone else around them; they both have shadowy international backers; they both surround themselves with the lackeys and advisors of past blood-soaked potentates; they both carried out a series of military adventures, claiming good and noble intentions, but ending in disaster; they're both skilled enough at overthrowing established states but lack either the aptitude or the intention to deal with the chaos that comes afterwards; they both happily betray the people that supported them; they both appeal to the notion that the downtrodden deserve justice, but do very little to actually deliver it; in the end, they're both motivated by little other than their own keening, deadly lust for power at all costs. So it holds, kinda; if Trump or Sanders were getting really desperate, you could imagine them drawing some parallels between their opponent and one of the most annoying people on TV. But of course it's not Clinton's opponents presenting her as a spoiled, avaricious princess, but her supporters. Dear god, why?

It would be easy to say that pop culture has turned us all into idiots, so let's imagine that for a moment. We've dozed too long in front of the screen, we forgot the real heaviness of the earth and the real infinity of the sky, and everything is now just an arrangement of pixels: we can't discuss anything, not even who should have the power to murder us at will, without relating it to some trite entertainment product. You don't talk to real people any more; you watch Netflix. You don't have friends – not exactly – but there are people you watch Netflix with. It's become our world. The human species is on the precipice. We're slowly starting to build artificial intelligence, machines that can see a world of real objects rather than patterns that correspond to a database of images – but at the same time, we're losing the ability to do the same thing ourselves: nothing makes sense unless it can be compared to something on TV.

The same thing's happening in Britain. There's some Game of Thrones mania drifting across the Atlantic, but we prefer villains to heroes. Oily fascoid rag The Spectator, for instance, is happy to compare Jeremy Corbyn to a fantasy zealot. But one show stands above them all. With every new catastrophic fuck-up on the part of our governing classes, some waggish political writer comes out to snidely inform us that it's Just Like Something From The Thick of It, as if that somehow means something.

The government advances and withdraws the same policy twice in the same day – total Thick of It style cock-up! Imperial war against an impoverished nation – I bet Malcolm's doing some grade-A swearing! A computer error causes all our Trident missiles to launch, ending human civilisation forever – fuckety-bye! The Thick of It is a show about people fucking up in British politics, but we've become so dazzled by images that we now believe people fucking up in British politics to somehow be about The Thick of It .

But really, it's not so much that pop culture is making politics stupid, and more the other way round: politics has become stupid, the stupidest thing out there, and it's dragging TV into its orbit of idiocy. What politics actually refers to is the field of contention between various antagonistic social interests, the space in which people are capable of thrashing out the basic question of what society should look like and what it should mean to live.

Look at how it's practiced, though, and politics pretends to be anything but that. Rather than actively working through our contradictions, political engagement is passive, mediated through heroic politicians. They go out and do things, while you just tick a box next to their name. And in the meantime, on any day other than polling day, political engagement works through the exact same channels as an overblown prestige TV drama. Watch a character on the screen, love or hate them according to your own personal preference, sound off on Twitter using the official hashtag, argue about this week's drama with colleagues and strangers, and try to predict what happens next. Here is your aristo-protagonist: let's watch their adventures and hope they win. It's out of your hands.

And nobody's better at deploying this kind of desaturated politics than Hillary Clinton. (Although it should be said that it's not just politicians. Beyoncé is a great pop artist, but she's not a great black feminist theoretician. For some reason, though, hundreds of people in the think-piece industry insist on behaving as if she is, to the extent that bell hooks – who is a great black feminist theoretician – faced a bizarre backlash simply for pointing out that any political content in Beyoncé's work will always be subordinated to its role as a commodity.) Aside from a few big investment bankers, nobody supports Clinton because she's actually going to advance her interests; she's never pretended that she's going to advance anyone's interests. You support Clinton because she has an interesting backstory and a nice face, because she represents some vague notions that you feel good about, because she's the designated hero against the evil villain Donald Trump. You support her in the same way you'd support one of the warring factions on Game of Thrones . You support her because Hillary Clinton really is Khaleesi.

@sam_kriss

More from VICE:

Corruption, Abuse and Manslaughter: The Inexscusable Failings of Britain's Worst Police Force

How Brexit Is Britain's Trump

Everyone Was a Loser in the Nigel Farage Vs. David Cameron TV Debate