Distracted From Distraction By Distraction
By None of it is distraction. It is all bad: the probable molesting of young girls, the military occupation of cities, the ignorant interference in Russia’s war on Ukraine, the obsessive need for tariff “deals,” the trashing of the Oval Office with plastic gold. And there’s more. None of it is distraction.
A friend with ADHD, after spending time with other friends and their two-year-old, said “I have one of those in my head, running from one place to another!” Donald Trump, too, has one of those in his head, and he shares with us. All the time.
That sharing has many functions. It keeps him in the spotlight. When he wants the spotlight off one topic, he introduces a new outrage. Activity to get attention and for its own sake has had many benefits for him.
Unfortunately for us, he is currently the President of the United States and thus his many actions and words may mean something that will impinge on our lives. They do not always – he has dropped his greed for Canada and Greenland, but there is no way to know he won’t go back to that particular obsession. He has learned that mentioning nuclear weapons is particularly good for getting attention.
The incompetents and malefactors he has surrounded himself with also demand attention. Stephen Miller orders brown people to be picked up and deported. RFK Jr is destroying the infrastructure for vaccines when he’s not making videos of exercising with Pete Hegseth. The Republican Congress rubber-stamps the defunding of pretty much everything. It’s just one damn thing after another.
It can be hard to prioritize. Making Canada the 51st state is clownish and annoying, but we have to be alert that the President isn’t deploying troops to the border. Deploying troops to DC looks like a first step toward martial rule. He threatens to occupy more cities. Will he do it? There is no way to know until it happens.
What I’ve decided is that I should focus on events where I have some special knowledge, although I also look at events that should outrage any citizen. But there are a lot of those! And I don’t always get to writing about any of it because stuff is coming down so rapidly, and it takes time to write real thoughts in the electrons.
Focus where you can and stick with it as much as possible. It would help if the national Democrats would stop calling everything a distraction. It minimizes some of the outrages, and they shouldn’t be minimized.
Title from T.S. Eliot’s Burnt Norton, one of the Four Quartets. Read the whole thing: it’s very current!