Today, in the political world, you either take Donald Trump seriously for the things he says and does, or you don’t. If you do, congratulations. You can stop reading. (And not just because you neither have the attention span nor emotional regulation nor open-mindedness nor intelligence nor sensibility to carry on, but because talking to you is like explaining rational thought to a silverback gorilla. And, as that gorilla, you probably have no idea what it’s like to have to do that [it’s quite labor-intensive]. And, as I don’t want to try to explain to you—i.e., the gorilla—what it’s like to try and explain things to someone like you—i.e., a gorilla—we won’t waste any more time on it.)
But if you don’t, you may find yourself getting frustrated with the stories you read and hear about (and thoughts and sentences that come from the mouths of) the man himself, or his press spokespeople, or the social media accounts associated with him. And maybe you question that frustration, when before there was none, or a lesser amount, and begin to think, perhaps, that there’s something increasingly wrong with you, some kind of underlying medical condition. It’s as if your brain no longer possesses the level of information retention or comprehension of language it used to, and the whole process of ‘listening’ and ‘understanding’ is just too much to devote the same amount of resources to.
I know I have.
I gave up reading the news as much, not long after Trump was elected. Shooing away my own shoulder-tapping, ear-nibbling belief that he should never been re-elected in the first place, in the beginning, I tried. I did. Eventually, I began to experience this strange phenomenon of my feeling like my I.Q. was lowering, like it would if, say, I were reading a self-published class bulletin put out by kindergarteners, about what went on every day in their Kindergarten class. Curiosity moved me at first to stay the course, because I believe in reading everything slipped under my nose, no matter what I think I already know about it. This is how I’ve accumulated knowledge in the past.
But it didn’t stop, the kindergarten bulletins. And, somehow, I’m starting to believe that this is the point. Trump may be an objectively-verifiable moron, but he does know how to manipulate the press. His efforts in dealing with them maybe unusual or unheard of among presidents—a kind of proprietary blend of lies, bluffs, threats, name-calling, denial, praise, bombast, deflection, accusation and passive-aggressiveness—but, as the current one, he generates the biggest headlines. And he knows it. Tweets, speculation and musings are now consistently front page material.
But how? How, really, does an entire administration, at the president’s behest, trick a press corps into making its readers more stupid?
It’s not hard, really. (Again, it is coming from Trump.)
“FAKE NEWS”
All the press is—pundits aside—is a megaphone for someone or something newsworthy to speak through. Sometimes it has a mind of its own—in the form of those pundits—but, like white blood cells in a body’s fight against microscopic invaders, there are enough of one kind to combat and neutralize the influence of the other. Sometimes one side wins, sometimes the other.
Assign whichever metaphor you like to whichever side of the political spectrum. Doesn’t really matter.
The mainstream press doesn’t have an ability to protect itself from the kind of quasi-autoimmune-disorder inflicted upon it by its own government in the form of lies, threats, name-calling, denial, etc.; it can’t make news out of that subject, which will be seen as any more exceptional than anything else it can make news out of. All it can do is do what it does, almost mindlessly. Thus, one of the first things a government can do, if it really, truly, wants to kill its own figurative immune system, is attack it. And attack and attack and attack it. Unremittingly. Now, the average person couldn’t get away with something like this; the mainstream press is normally just too powerful to be beaten down. But a man in Trump’s position who so lacks a sense of wrongdoing who’s been at it—with the largest, widest spotlight on him—for over a decade now? It starts to kind of work. At least for the intended audience.
But why would you want cancel out your own immune system? you may ask. Don’t you need one?
It’s not the entire system (Trump does love his smaller, rightwing media machines), just aspects that interfere with your having a good time. It’s not saying, “Please, I want you to let the influenza kill me this winter,” it’s, “No no, don’t break down those tropane alkaloid molecules, I snorted that cocaine for a reason!”
SEE THIS? THIS ISN’T WHAT YOU SEE
Trump posted a photo last Sunday of the National Mall lawn after it had been worn down by the erection and placement of a grandstand, artificial surface and (what he claims were) 400,000 people tromping all over it during the July 4th celebration, declaring, “Look what VANDALS did!” Right where those people, surfaces and erections were, there was degradation. (It rose to 103° F that weekend, too.) It was the simplest of puzzles to piece together: construction + attendees = grass browning, and Trump tried to tell people that 2 + 2 doesn’t actually equal 4. ‘Those pieces that look like they fit there? They don’t go there. I don’t know where they go, but they don’t go there.’
Now, that, in and of itself, is nothing new. Being mindful of a government trying to convince you that 2 + 2 doesn’t equal 4 was the underlying message in George Orwell’s 1984. Governments of a more overt, repressive lean still do this, of course, and have for centuries. But the really remarkable thing here is that, in 21st century America, the freest country in the world where anything a political leader claims can almost instantly be verified by anyone online, Trump keeps doing it.
Eventually, someone listening won’t say 2 + 2 doesn’t equal 4. They’ll say, “2 + 2 equals 4? Ah, who even cares anymore?” And that’s how they get you.
AGGRESSIVE, SH*TTY PARENTING
Flak as media control is nothing new, either. It’s a well-documented way to shut “dissenting voices” in the media up. And by “dissenting voices”, I mean people who spot that the emperor isn’t actually wearing any clothing, and try to point it out to the people who think he does.
It’s remarking, “Hey, that dude is naked. Why isn’t he wearing any clothing? Gahh, somebody put something over him, I just had lunch!” and a room full of other nude perpetrators or sycophants shouting back, “Are you stupid?! Shut up!! Your kids are going to be embarrassed by that question one day, it was so stupid,” assuming the role of authority figure(s) in the moment, and not only shaming the asker in the process, but instantly manifesting the power dynamics of sh—y parent to curious six-year old child. After a while, in the verbally and psychologically abused mindset of that six-year-old, there will no longer be a desire to pose sensible questions to people. Independent thought will probably be abandoned, as well.
This is what happened to a CNN reporter on Monday when she asked Trump about deteriorating conditions on the Arabian-Sea-deployed USS Lincoln. And it wasn’t the first time.
Now, maybe you’re saying, “A parent shouldn’t have to tell a child everything it wants to know, or answer all its questions. That’s too much parenting.”
Maybe, good parent. Maybe. But a public servant should. Which, reminder: That’s what a president is.
IDIOCY THROUGH OSMOSIS
Lies, bluffs, threats, name-calling, denial, praise, bombast, deflection, accusation, passive-aggressiveness. The list goes on. If this is what you continually receive from your federal government via the media, and not the factual information that renders you a more informed citizen, quite simply, the opposite of being factually informed occurs. Namely: stupidity. And it, of course, understands this quite well.
Stupidity can most assuredly be contagious, and fuel a national pandemic of degradative idiocy. Especially when those contagions originate with the secret laboratory/wet market that is the U.S. federal government, transmitted unwittingly by the coughs, sneezes, sleeve wipes and unwashed hands of mass media.
