Last weekend's gaudy gladiatorial event on the White House lawn was a bizarre devolution of institutional norms. 

It's also depressingly illustrative of our current political moment. 

As we saw in the primary for Nevada's 2nd Congressional District, many voters aren't terribly concerned with decorum, nuanced policy discussions or refined intellectual arguments. Instead, noise, spectacle and anything that could easily be sponsored by Idiocracy's Brawndo corporation is, apparently, far more alluring. 

Or, as Hunter S. Thompson wrote in Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional." And considering the weird state of U.S. politics, that's precisely what we saw happen in Northern Nevada. 

To be sure, there are a lot of reasons a candidate who moved into the district at the last minute and incessantly distorted his opponent's record was able to emerge victorious. However, the principal reason might be that David Flippo (R) simply made more noise than his opponent — and in today's politics, noise matters a tremendous amount. 

Flippo was louder, more outlandish and more willing to rage-bait than his competition — earning him significant attention from the sort of controversy-driven peddlers of outrage and chaos that make up much of the MAGA establishment. 

It should be no mystery, therefore, that a president who splashes gold on every piece of trim in the Oval Office and zealously hosts ostentatious UFC bouts on the White House lawn would find such brash and performative techniques worthy of his endorsement — especially considering just how unapologetically sycophantic the candidate promised to be if elected.

Unfortunately, one of the lessons to be learned for future politicians is depressingly simple: Get loud. 

In the minds of many voters who are eager for "their side" to spout a few gratifying sound bites, someone willing to shout incessantly at the world is simply more attractive than someone concerned with old-fashioned standards such as voting records, ideological consistency or even common decency. 

However, this dynamic isn't exactly new. Most of President Donald Trump's tenure in politics, for example, can be explained by voters in the Republican Party wanting precisely that. 

When Trump first showed up on the political scene by descending on his golden escalator in Trump Tower, he didn't have some long list of nuanced policy ideas or deeply sophisticated set of constitutional solutions to well-known social and economic grievances. Instead, his campaign was defined by chants of "Lock her up," "Build the wall" and "Make America Great Again" — all while tossing childish and sexist insults at his opponents and bragging about the size of his "hands" during presidential debates. 

Now, well into his second term, it's become quite obvious that whatever peripheral policy promises actually managed to creep into his campaigns weren't actually important to many of the voters who supported him. Far from "draining the swamp," Trump has largely empowered lobbyists, consultants and political insiders in Washington, D.C. Similarly, Obamacare remains in place, the federal government has started seizing the means of production by purchasing stakes in private companies, inflation is once again on the rise and foreign military actions have become a hallmark of his second term in office. 

In other words, by the supposed policy standards MAGA itself, Trump should be considered a grotesque failure. But the noise and raucous spectacle of his tenure has largely kept the movement cheering him on because it provides a dopamine fix that boring (but effective) policymaking simply can't provide in equal measure. 

Much of what keeps Trump popular among Republicans is the fact that he's a rambunctious rabble-rouser — and in that sense, his rise within the party isn't terribly unique. Voters from all ideological persuasions, as it turns out, have long enjoyed the spectacle of something new and strange, especially if it's seen as potentially threatening to their political rivals. 

In 1970, for example, Hunter S. Thompson was so convinced of voters' appetite for something outrageous, he decided to run for sheriff of a rural Colorado county on a platform he described as the "Freak Power Ticket." In typical Thompson fashion, his campaign was as radical as one would expect, illustrated by gonzo-style artwork, punctuated with looney promises to scare corporations away from the region and fueled by copious amounts of drugs and alcohol — as well as a public promise to stop taking mescaline while "on duty" if elected.

His campaign wasn't successful, but as a third-party candidate he came remarkably close to winning. The groundswell of support for his unique "freak" politicking came largely from the simple fact that he was loud and different enough to get noticed in an era already marked by social and cultural lunacy of all types. 

The allure of such "outsider" candidates isn't unique to radical '70s "freaks," nor is it only evident among modern-day Republicans. Democrats similarly have slipped into a state where attention-grabbing populism is often enough for voters to overlook almost any character flaw. 

In Maine, for example, Democrats recently selected a candidate in their primary who has an "unsettling" history with numerous women and has made headlines for sporting a Nazi-themed tattoo — not exactly the sort of candidate one would expect from the anti-fascist and Me Too progressives who tend to populate the Democratic Party. 

The decision of Maine's Democratic voters is even more puzzling when one considers that the Republican he will face in the general election is Sen. Susan Collins — arguably the most liberal Republican in Washington and one of the few members of the GOP who voted to convict President Trump at his impeachment trial after his first term. 

Despite these faults, however, Maine's Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner's populist messaging and insurgency campaign as a political outsider was initially so exciting, that his only serious opponent dropped out of the race before ballots were even cast. In other words, Democratic voters were so eager for a rambunctious "outsider" to come along, it didn't end up mattering much who that outsider actually was — and Platner seized the opportunity.

Apparently, to some rabid partisan activists, concerns about how fit someone might be for office simply don't matter. Instead, many voters are willing to reward whatever deafening political bullshittery emanates from their side of the political aisle — the personal flaws of whoever spouts such nonsense notwithstanding. 

And in that sense, the absurd spectacle of heavily branded cage fights on the White House lawn perfectly encapsulates our current political moment — a moment where being the loudest lunatic in the asylum is often the only thing required to accumulate power. 

Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas and founder of Schaus Creative LLC, an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change. He has more than a decade of experience in public affairs commentary, having worked as a news director, columnist, political humorist and most recently as the director of communications for a public policy think tank. Follow him on Twitter @schausmichael or on Substack @creativediscourse.