Allow me to begin with an admission. Namely, I feel somewhat guilty about writing this column. My ambivalence has nothing to do with any reticence regarding the subject matter per se. Rather, it has to do with the fact that the subject matter was likely propagated as an intentional effort to distract the American people from the latest tranche of the Epstein files. Those files mention President Trump roughly 38,000 times. (At what point does a “coincidence” stop being a “coincidence”?)
The subject matter to which I am referring is the fact that Trump is most likely the “staffer” who posted a racist video that depicted President and First Lady Obama as apes. Further, as improbable as it seems, this issue became even worse afterwards.
We have all watched scores of Trump apologists twist themselves into rhetorical pretzels in an ill-advised effort to explain it away. However, I will add that it was good to see an unusual number of Republicans urge him to apologize. Naturally, he has refused to do so.
In short, the President of the United States is banking on both the fact that people have a limited capacity to absorb the volume of information to which we are subjected daily, and that we also have a limited capacity to be outraged by his every … outrage. It’s like the movies “Groundhog Day” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” mated and gave birth to a documentary titled “I Can’t Believe What Trump Did Today.”
Trump’s muse, Steve Bannon, has openly talked about the political strategy of “flooding the zone” (i.e., intentionally making it almost impossible to respond to every abhorrent statement or action). Trump’s Secretary of Evil, Stephen Miller, is charged with implementing said strategy. I’m pretty sure that no one in this administration earns his or her paycheck more than Miller does.
Thus, the content of the video in some ways takes a backseat to its context. And the context is that this president has said and done so many vile things that it is extremely tempting to chalk this latest incident up simply to “Trump being Trump.”
Many well-meaning people counsel us to ignore him because of the energy that doing so takes and because the act of responding gives him a victory. Yet the moral question remains: “When is a distraction not merely a distraction?” That is the dilemma which Trump repeatedly forces this nation to confront. Nothing is “out of bounds” for someone who has no boundaries. What, then, are we to do?
“Nothing is ‘out of bounds’ for someone who has no boundaries.”
For decades I believed that the best way to combat a bad idea was to counter it with a good idea. As we peruse the marketplace of ideas, we can evaluate which propositions are productive and which ones are corrosive. Today, however, I’m not so sure that that’s adequate.
The volume of bad ideas can be overwhelming for people who are struggling to figure out how to pay rent, buy food, or take their chronically ill child (or parent) to doctor visits. Equally as important, our political, social and racial tribalism are at near historic heights (or depths).
While I remain a strong proponent of the First Amendment, I have grown increasingly pessimistic about the rapacious spread of misinformation (e.g., regarding vaccines), not to mention the bombardment of disinformation that poses a clear existential threat to our democracy. Thus, in the end, it is crucial for us to focus on the most important issues. We must tune out the nonsense and distractions.
What were you saying about the Trump Kennedy Center?
Contact community leader Larry Smith at larry@leaf-llc.com.
