The rise in extremist rhetoric facing U.S. politics today shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone. We saw during Donald Trump’s first term, the general exacerbation of harmful speech displayed for the world to see. It's how he garnered attention, how Trump won the vote. 

How that speech is employed, by whom and what its effects are, is what should interest us the most. As George Orwell warned, “political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

The majority of the GOP has rallied behind one candidate and one message for the past eight years. Successive branches of political speech have festered in the media to compliment the rising demand for increasingly radical ideas. Figures like Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens and Andrew Tate provided the aggrieved consumer, sick of the ‘wokeness’ in the media, with these outlets of radicalized speech. It is here that we have fallen victim to a certain kind of rhetorical price discrimination.

Take Apple, the smartphone company, and look at its recent flagship line up. The iPhone 17 Pro Max — sold at its highest storage capacity — retails for $1,999 before tax. The iPhone 17 sits at $799. More than a 150% markup, in which the latter seems more financially digestible when placed side by side to the former. This is what economists call price discrimination. 

Corporations will market and price a lineup of similar products with the same fundamental........

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