Rule By Sleight of Hand
Distraction and misdirection during the Trump presidency
After this, I think I’m done weighing in on politics for a while. The surreal nature of the past couple of weeks is slowly melting into sadness. And it’s honestly been hard to write about anything else because nothing else seems to matter. That, of course, is not true. But the stakes are so much higher in our political landscape at this juncture. All I know is that I’m happy I’m no longer a full time technology writer, because I’d have a hard time focusing right now. While focusing on what really matters…
Speaking of…
It’s a theme I’ve seen pop up multiple times on the social web the past few days; the notion that we should stop getting distracted by the latest topic du jour that just doesn’t matter. The latest example: people booing Vice President-elect Mike Pence at a performance of Hamilton in NYC this past week. And, at the end of the show, the cast took to the stage to read him a (brilliant) message about tolerance.
I both loved this and shared it myself. But, if I’m being honest, I do worry it’s a complete distraction from what actually matters. Just a day before all of this happened, it was revealed that Donald Trump would pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit over his “university” program which may or may not have defrauded people. People which will now call Donald Trump president.
Anyway, one thing seems meaningful, the other ultimately doesn’t. That’s subjective, of course. But I feel like this is a time for subjectivity. We’re losing focus.
This only really occurred to me while reading a post about the parallels between Trump and Silvio Berlusconi, the disgraced former head of Italy. The same author actually predicted five years ago that Donald Trump would become president after seeing the rise of Berlusconi. And he could not have been more dead-on. And one key: misdirection:
Mr. Berlusconi was able to govern Italy for as long as he did mostly thanks to the incompetence of his opposition. It was so rabidly obsessed with his personality that any substantive political debate disappeared; it focused only on personal attacks, the effect of which was to increase Mr. Berlusconi’s popularity. His secret was an ability to set off a Pavlovian reaction among his leftist opponents, which engendered instantaneous sympathy in most moderate voters. Mr. Trump is no different.
Don’t like the narrative? Misdirect to bullshit. This is really hard for a normal politician to do, but for people like Berlusconi or Trump, it’s simple. There are a number of ways to “change the narrative” because you know the opposition will jump on it. You could, say, send your incoming vice president to a showing of Hamilton knowing he’ll cause a confrontation.
Then you can keep it going by “reacting” to it. Ideally in real time.
Maybe it’s too cynical to think this was on purpose. But it doesn’t actually matter. What matters is that this is going to be the focus of the media for the next week when they should be focused on dozens of other things of far more importance. The reason is obvious: this is what people click on/watch/etc. But it doesn’t make it right.
In fact, it makes it especially wrong.
In my opinion, this is the single most dangerous possibility about a Trump presidency. That he’ll be able to misdirect real news to fake news at the snap of a finger. That a legitimate scandal will turn into a “you’re fired” quip. This is his talent, and we eat it up and so the media serves it up.
I’m really, really, really worried about this. Because it’s already happening. And I have no solution other than continuing the call to focus on what matters. I know it’s easy to say: forgo the junk food, eat your vegetables. But I also know it’s important. Just look at Italy.
