Even before today I was thinking about how much the Trump era (unsurprisingly for the b-roll president) has been shaped by visuals of masses of people.

It starts with (the rallies which are a forerunner to) the inauguration, of course. But the thing people forget about the inauguration is that Sean Spicer's hissy fit came over 24h later — after a Saturday dominated by _visuals of the overwhelming turnout of the Women's March._

The Women's March(es) and airport protests gave photographers the opportunity to document mass, unorganized-therefore-"authentic" opposition to Trump.

Trump himself of course always got and relied on the power of masses of people to demonstrate _threat_ — starting with his use of b-roll from Europe in his first campaign ad, but peaking, of course, with the 2018 caravan, which was marked by striking masses visuals.

(I've said elsewhere and will say again that the 2018 caravan was genuinely important as a news event and that coverage of it generally was very good at illuminating why it was important--but b-roll is silent.)

That got turned on its face with the images of masses of people caged inside (or outside!) border facilities in spring-summer 2019, which the admin thought would demonstrate how overwhelmed border was but instead spoke to many of sheer abjection.

In 2020, the pandemic made the _fact_ of gathering together in large groups itself politicized and associated with the anti-COVID right (with the bigbig exception of the BLM protests of the spring/summer).

But think about this: even as the pandemic approached a mass-casualty event (and then, ultimately, a mass-casualty event every day), social distancing prevented opportunities for any mass-casualty imagery. Which might have made the threat seem more remote to many.

And now, of course, we have the images of people storming the Capitol today -- extremely reminiscent of similar photos in WI/MI/OH last spring during anti-lockdown protests. Masses as uncontrollable flesh.

People often say that politics shifts when issues get humanized for people. Maybe! But there's also an influence of the converse, at least visually, and when you have CNN or Fox on mute all day visually is what you got.