We can’t look away

I’m a bit of a newshound at the best of times (and by “best” I mean “most politically boring”), but now – largely thanks to the black hole of political chaos down south – I’ve been struggling to think about anything else for the past month and a half. I suspect a lot of you feel the same. 

In so far as I’m willing to credit Trump with any capacity for strategic thinking, I’ll say that this is deliberate on his part: he wants us to be constantly thinking about him and the latest things he’s done or said, even (maybe especially) if we are appalled by those things. That’s because constantly commanding our attention is how he can get us to believe deep down that he has all the initiative – that he is the one who acts and everyone else can only react. If he can constantly bombard us with new outrages, it can seem to us that he can get away with everything. When he can persuade us that he has unaccountable power, he will actually have achieved it. 

Mascots turned monster

This puts me in mind of an old episode of The Simpsons, where giant advertising mascots come to life and start destroying Springfield. Nothing the townsfolk do can stop them until Lisa realizes that the trick is to ignore them. Advertisements live on attention; if you deny them attention they go away. It’s a struggle for Lisa to convince the townsfolk not to look at the giants destroying their town, so she (in a pleasant irony) harnesses the power of advertising, writing a jingle: “Just don’t look! Just don’t look!”

I wish that would work on Trump. It may be that denying him the validation of our constant outrage might damage him. But if his strategy is to get away with things (or seeming to) until everyone tacitly grants him the power to do those things, then looking away can also be exactly what he wants. He may want to overwhelm us into apathy.

Political clichés

In doing so, he would be pushing on an open door for a huge part of the population. Most people find politics to be tiring, frustrating and unedifying; all the more so when conflict is heightened. We don’t like conflict and want to back away from it. When we do, we use clichés to justify that backing-away: “Well, they’re all corrupt, aren’t they?” “Let’s just disagree without being disagreeable!” “Both sides are radicalized, let’s just turn down the temperature.” It’s an understandable reaction. 

But those clichés are, at best, half-truths and retreating from politics is not going to make the crises of our time go away; this isn’t like The Simpsons. It’s okay to take breaks – you don’t owe it to the world to be glued to your TV or phone or to wreck your mental health – but we can’t (and can’t allow others) to pretend like this is all normal and will blow over by itself. Looking alone won’t suffice either – we need to take action as we can. Maybe I’ll talk about that in my next column (though God only knows what monstrosities will arise in the meantime and demand my next 500 words and three minutes of your precious attention!).