Attention Conservation

I’ve taken some steps to try to claw back my ability to think from the daily chaos. One is to avoid reading material that is clearly propaganda. As you read various messages, they sink into your brain, even if you start out disagreeing with them. So no thanks, there’s usually enough commentary that I can get the gist of what the propagandists are saying.

I also ask whether what is being said is important in any way. Is it an immediate threat? Can I use it in some way to help undermine the regime? Those two questions are most of what I use to define whether something is important.

Is my response important or useful? As a front-pager here and a Bluesky elder with 22,000 followers, I have some responsibility to my readers. If I feel my explanation or even opinion will be helpful to them, okay. But there are a bunch of people, particularly on Bluesky, who can do at least as well as I can, although I tend to think that I make my explanations more accessible.

I’m leading up to the “nuclear testing” kerfuffle. Trump emits a post that is wrong on every point it makes. The response machine goes into high gear. News outlets and other organizations assumed immediately that it was an order to begin explosively testing nuclear weapons. There was something about other nations “testing,” with no definition of that word and then a demand that the US do it too.

My approach to interpreting Trump is to ask whether what he is saying makes sense or is actionable. He’s president, so the second is often applicable. He’s Trump, so the first, almost never. He hardly ever makes sense these days. There are a few ways to respond to that. One is to try to figure out something that makes sense that might be what he is trying to say. My own belief about this is that it’s not worth my sanity to try to figure out how his mind works. Another is to try to figure out what set him off. The one I prefer is to ask what action might result.

That requires a bit of backstory as to what might have provoked Trump. Russia had announced successful tests of two nuclear-powered nuclear delivery vehicles. Also, lying around in the recesses of nuclear wonks’ heads, is the accusation that Russia has performed hydronuclear tests in violation of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which Russia has ratified and the US hasn’t. It’s possible that he caught onto that somehow – briefed by someone who wanted to use it to make trouble?

I guarantee you that Trump has no idea of what hydronuclear tests or the CTBT are. As to what might result, nuclear explosive tests are a long way in the future, although a clear declaration of a restart, accompanied by funding and other actions, would be destabilizing to the world nuclear order. So Trump’s statement is a mental belch that he’s annoyed at something that he thinks that other countries are doing and that he wants to look more powerful than he thinks they look. He later doubled down and said yes he wants nuclear testing, but he always doubles down. The Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, said nobody is looking at nuclear explosive testing. What his underlings say isn’t necessarily determinative, but Wright’s comments are consistent with reality.

Many experts responded with detailed discussions describing the history of nuclear testing and the current situation. Some of this is useful to inform people of the issues associated with what Trump may have said. I hesitate to say there shouldn’t be any of this at all, but it does tend to imply that Trump said something intelligible about these issues. He didn’t. It  also can be a waste of time and energy.

I’ve been trying on Bluesky to shift the conversation to looking at the larger context, rather than parsing every Trump word. When a commenter wanted to get into the weeds of hydronuclear tests and the CTBT, I said I didn’t want to go down that path. Explanations of that are difficult and can be confusing and would take more time than I was willing to put in at that point.

It’s not just nuclear issues, of course, but whatever subject piques his frenzy. Look at the context. Don’t get trapped in the rabbit holes he opens up.