Tag: Politics

Truth and Reconciliation: Thoughts on Truth
Hello everyone and welcome to the new era. How about those press conferences, eh? And wow talk about going right back to old-style controversies like the last four years never happened (very cool NYT)! So I’ve been hearing some talk — and I’m pretty sure that at least some of it has been happening outside of my own head — about a post-Trump, post-January 6, post-where-ever-we-draw-the-line Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and I thought hey, I have a lot of thoughts about that.

For background, so we’re all starting from the same page, probably the most famous T&R Commission was on the end of Apartheid in South Africa. Many other countries have had their own commissions as well. They all follow the same basic model of a realization that something wack went down that really needs to be addressed for the good of the country. The United States, for all its posturing as the beacon of light for the world, has always avoided acknowledging the truly wack things that have happened here. We have yet to do anything lasting or meaningful to address past things like slavery, pushing out indigenous peoples, or putting people in camps and cages.

If you’ve been here before, you know that I like musing on basic subjects: fear, isolation, motivation, fear again. (Check out the Harry Potter and the Sacred Text podcast for this but done better.) For my sanity, I’m going to break my thoughts on Truth and Reconciliation down in a similar way. The logical place to start then is with truth.

The Trust in Truth

To talk about truth, we have to talk about trust. There can be no agreement between parties without trust. If you don’t trust either the other party, or if you don’t trust yourself to be able to extricate yourself from the fallout of the failure of the agreement, then you won’t enter into it in the first place. This trust is best achieved through truth.

At its core, democracy is an agreement between people on how to govern themselves. This means that people have to be able to trust each other in order to come to an agreement — and not in the way of trusting themselves to be able to take care of themselves if the going gets bad; that is no longer a system of democracy, because the interaction is no longer interpersonal. Two of the most prevalent political ideologies battering at our democracy today are Libertarianism and Authoritarianism. These both in a way trace back to a dearth of trust: Libertarianism by losing it in others and directing it back inwards, and Authoritarianism by losing it in others and directing it instead towards a chosen authority (which is a roundabout way of directing it back inwards).

A Slight Tangent

Democracy is also not an agreement between the people and the government, because the government is not an entity separate from the people. Both Libertarianism and Authoritarianism could lead one to believe otherwise, however. Libertarianism, in saying that the government cannot be trusted, is both implying that (1) other people cannot be trusted and (2) the government is an Other entity that cannot be trusted. This is of course an ideological tension if you believe in a government of for and by the people, but it also allows entry for more people to have their own version of Libertarianism.

Authoritarianism, on the other hand, says that (1) other people cannot be trusted, (2) the government is an Other entity, and (3) only their chosen authoritative government can be trusted. In a way, it’s a more stable philosophy. If you cannot trust other people, it makes sense to put your trust in an authority that can dictate the actions of the other people.

This also highlights the easiest way to sabotage a society: to ruin its internal trust. If you are fed the idea that other people cannot be trusted, then it makes perfect sense for you to conclude that you cannot be in democratic congress with them.

Types of Truth

So let’s talk about truth. The two main forms of truth available to us are truth in words and truth in action. Human society got to this point because of our awesome skills of complex communication. Other organisms may have basic language, rudimentary systems of communication and learning, but none of them have invented telephones or satellites yet, and none of them have come even close to needing those yet.

Words — languages — are how we have managed this. Actions may be an element of communication, but they cannot convey complex concepts. Actions are furthermore subject to the individual interpretations that happen in the brains of each person who observes them. Words have the power to be precise in a way that actions can never be.

Communication in the Age of Technology

The internet has created the illusion that words are cheap in a way that they never have been before. Pre-written language, words were shaped into stories that could be told through the generations. Physical forms of writing each have their own costs associated with them, from chisel to ink. They also have an inherent audience limit. Now, any fool with a connection can put out words that can be accessed by anyone else. The audience limit is orders of magnitude larger. We have created platforms that serve the explicit purpose of reaching incomprehensibly massive numbers of people essentially for free.

Cheap words means it’s easier to use them without consequence. If you say something wrong, something false, you can easily add more words to try to make it better. There’s no reason to ever regulate your words.

If the perception of words is that they’re cheap, then actions gain increased importance. It’s not what you say, it’s what you actually do that matters. Actions become concrete evidence, an incontrovertible truth, by which we can all judge. (Cyclically this also erodes the power of words.)

However, this then follows that the actions of those in positions of power are correspondingly more important as well. That means that merely paying lip service to something is insufficient. One cannot both cheapen words and then expect to be able to live off of them. In that situation there is a complete absence of truth, and thus of trust. On another note, they also need to be able to take actions by which they can be judged.

So What Is Truth?

There is no absolute truth, because there is no absolute reality. Practically speaking, everything is based off our perception of reality, not off of reality itself (whatever that may be). That means that a shared truth is a shared trust that we’re all interpreting reality the same way. Societies are built on this shared truth.

If someone professes a belief in another reality, either by word or by action, that is not just empty words and actions; that is an invitation into another truth. If that professed belief is a lie, then that is an attack on a common truth and trust and thereby on society itself.

A belief in a lie can be committed without intention. Americans aren’t reinventing the lie of white supremacy every generation, and yet it has persisted for longer than the nation itself. It’s a lie that has been woven into the very fabric of this country; and yet, as with all lies, it is nonetheless tearing our society apart. The only way to fix it is to first acknowledge that it exists, that it is a lie, and that it must be addressed head on with a truth that is shared by all Americans.

Further Reading:
- Wiki on Truth Commissions
- Social Contract Theory Overview
- Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
28 January 2021
Make Space: The Space of Fear
In the interest of Being Festive, let’s talk about the space of fear! Because is there a better way to celebrate holidays than by writing essays? I think not. I wrote about fear last Halloween from the self-care angle. This year I’ll examine it from my Make Space angle. If you haven’t already, you can catch up here with Part 1: Clutter and Part 2: Listening!

I aim to approach this from two angles. First, by asking what the space of fear looks like; and second, by looking at what it pushes out. Disclaimer here (that I usually forget to add because apparently I just can’t be bothered to spend the time remembering) that I am not am expert, I just like to read all the things and then regurgitate unsolicited thoughts back out. Enjoy!

The Space of Fear

Fear can be roughly separated into two types: acute and chronic. Acute is short-lived, usually a response to a situation, lasting basically as long as your body can produce adrenaline. This can range from tripping on the sidewalk (brief burst of adrenaline, very short time being afraid) to being followed at night (more sustained adrenaline, longer period of fear). Chronic is fear that persists either longer than the danger, or danger that persists longer than your body can physically respond.

Technically speaking, what I’m describing as chronic fear is actually anxiety. There are some nuances, but basically anxiety is fear without a concrete source. As far as I’m concerned, for the purposes of this blog, “fear without a concrete source” is still fear.

When you’re in that space of fear, it doesn’t feel great. You feel like you’re being closed in. Every decision you face is more fraught. If it’s chronic, you feel more tired, because your body is working overtime to keep you alive. Fear takes up a lot of room and it doesn’t like to share. It invades and tinges everything else with its color: its murk of tension, exhaustion, apprehension, and apathy.

Spoons

When the space available to you is taken up with fear, there’s less space left for other things. You have less bandwidth to deal with additional problems, even the minor ones. And you have less space to devote to anything outside yourself: fear is forcing you to spend your energy on yourself, on keeping yourself alive.

A popular metaphor in the disability community is that of spoons. When you’re living with a chronic illness, you often have less energy or are more quickly depleted than someone who isn’t. Spoons represent your units of energy, of which you have a set number that only recharges with rest and sleep. Living with chronic fear is, in effect, living with a chronic illness.

What We Fear

Before we go any further, let’s build some context. As I write this, we’re in the seventh month of dealing with a historic pandemic that has so far killed over a million people worldwide, almost a quarter of those in the United States alone. This has severely strained our already threadbare social safety net. While the official unemployment rate is relatively low, this fails to count people who have dropped out of the workplace to take care of children who now aren’t in school full time, people whose industries have disappeared, or all of the people who are underemployed.

This is all in addition to all the “usual” causes of fear that were around before the pandemic, and will remain after it. These range from existential threats such as climate change to personal fears for our own success and well-being.

What Impacts Our Fears

Of course our fears don’t live in isolation. They are rooted in the condition of the world we inhabit. A world that leaves individuals to fend for themselves is inherently more fearful than one that establishes a community to delegate burdens of care. A world with lots of inequality is more fearful on both ends. On the bottom end of the spectrum, there is more fear for basic necessities. On the top end, there’s the fear that comes from the prospect of losing privilege should the inequality fail to persist. Naturally, this creates additional tension between those who would like to live more comfortably and those who benefit from others having less.

The Space That’s Left

So what is outside the space of fear? What gets pushed out? When we’re in a space of fear, our attention is focused inwards, on getting ourselves through the fear. That means there is less room for other people — less room for caring about them. A parent who is overwhelmed with trying to pay bills and put food on the table is going to have a harder time being present for their children. Someone working multiple jobs to stay afloat is going to have much less space to think about things like politics. A student who doesn’t know where her next meal will come from is going to have a harder time focusing in class. A black man who is afraid of being summarily executed by police or an immigrant afraid of deportation is going to have a harder time moving around freely in society.

It’s also easier to fall back onto more base instincts when faced with fear. With your reduced space, it’s harder to devote any of your remaining bandwidth to complex or nuanced thoughts. Again, it’s a game of survival. The condition of your fellow people need only apply as they directly and visibly relate back to you. You can get so used being attacked that you see potential attacks in every action around you — and react accordingly.

A Society in the Space of Fear

Fear is a potent emotion. It’s pretty good at keeping us alive by grabbing our attention when a threat presents itself. That same mechanism is ripe for exploitation, by its very nature. One of the easiest ways of getting people’s attention is through fear. Be it real or manufactured, fear has a natural leg up on other emotions when it comes to selling ideas.

Fear is also a powerful controlling mechanism: if you do x, then scary y thing will happen. If you cheat on your test, then you’ll get detention. If you break the law, then you’ll go to jail. Or maybe if you just break some norm, you’ll face vigilante “justice”.

Society doesn’t have to operate based on fear, though. Just because it is a sticky emotion, that doesn’t make it the most effective. Machiavelli might have preferred to be feared to maintain power, but a society operating in a space of fear has the same problems as an individual in a space of fear. There’s less space for growth, for creativity, for anything other than bare survival. We have other tools at our disposal. We can lessen the fears that people face.

Mitigating the Space of Fear

Fear is mitigated with action. Being able to do something about whatever is worrying you can dramatically cut down on how fearful you feel. We often face problems that are bigger than what we can deal with at once, on our own; or we have anxieties about things over which we have no control at all. In these cases, it’s good to try and do what we can, what we have the space and the spoons for, and then learn to set the rest aside — not forever, but until we have the space to pick it back up.

I wrote in my last blog about making space for those who need it, if you have the space to spare. There are groups in our world who chronically face more fear than others, which chronically cuts down on the space available to them. For most of the history of the United States, various laws encoded a system in which black people were at the bottom of society, and held there by fear. While those overt laws have been replaced, the ingrained attitudes take much longer to erase. Other minorities face similar obstacles. Women have had to fear violence from men for as long as humanity has existed. Members of the LGBT communities have long been given reasons to fear living openly. The list goes on.

Making space for others doesn’t mean speaking for them. It means giving them the space for their own expression. It means using what excess power you might have to allow someone else a break from their burden of fear. Overall, it means living in a less fearful world.

Further Reading:
31 October 2020
Make Space: Clutter, Attention, and Your Place in Society
Where can you make space in your life today?

So… it’s been a rough go of it lately. And it doesn’t look like things are going to get much better any time soon. In addition to the stress, anxiety, and depression contributing to my writers block, it also seems like every time I put together my outline for this post, some other major event happens that I feel the need to address as well. [For reference, the first (now wholly discarded) draft was pre-George Floyd.] History seems to be roaring past us right now.

On the other hand, what has actually changed? All of the problems we have today have their echoes and equivalents in the past. And really, the people walking the Earth today are essentially the same as those who were walking around 5,000 years ago. There’s just more of us now, with fancier toys.

Dedicated Readers of this blog may recall that I read and reviewed a book last year titled Make Space, and that I was not particularly thrilled by it. That is, the content was fine, but the execution was… lacking. In spite of that, the basic theory it presented has kept simmering in the back of my mind, intruding in on other topics. What better time to consider physical space than when faced with social distancing orders? To consider emotional space than when faced with racial justice protests breaking out around the country and around the world, or to consider mental space than when we’re all faced with news overload from this year? The original book was only about minimalism in interior design and self-help, but the principle of making space has much broader implications. My attempt here is to write what I wish that book had actually been.

The Background of Making Space

In order to make space, we first need to take stock of what is currently taking up that space. This means taking a good hard look at your surroundings — and you know I don’t just mean physical. What does your mental framework look like? How are your emotional underpinnings structured? Where is your attention centered?

The design goal of Make Space is minimalism. Minimalism in design pares elements down to the understated essentials, which brings increased attention to the few things present. Minimalism in music is made by repetition and very gradual change, which focuses attention on the musical minutiae used. Similarly, minimalism in visual art often uses repetition in its geometric, structural shapes. The underlying idea is to set a homogeneous base from which subtle changes are magnified, and large deviations from the pattern have exponentially more impact.

The book suggests getting rid of clutter and excess, whereby you can discover what is truly essential to you. It’s a version of Marie Kondo’s sparking joy. How much space can you clear? Once you have cleared the space, you have the room to truly enjoy life… or so the theory goes.

Why Make Space?

The physical space we occupy informs a lot of our mental space. The most obvious example of this is clutter. Some people work very well in a cluttered office, but I would hazard a guess that the majority of people are negatively impacted by that kind of environment, whether they realize it or not. If you live or work in a cluttered space and often feel overwhelmed or anxious, the clutter might be a contributing factor.

However, there are other affective physical elements to consider, such as those that tend to impact only certain groups. For example, let’s take stairs. They might not be a notable feature for someone like me, but for someone who can’t walk very well or at all, they represent a big physical challenge. This physical challenge in turn becomes a mental strain. For every place they go, they have to consider the navigability of that place. While each individual instance of encountering stairs may not be a huge deal, in the aggregate it becomes a much larger mental load.

The Power of the Individual

Many of these discriminatory environments exist at a societal level. This means it is far outside the ability of any one person to control them, to make them less discriminatory. It’s human nature to just accept the things that are too big to control — especially if they aren’t impacting you personally. As a white woman, I have generally no reason to be afraid during encounters with police. But I also know this isn’t the case for everyone. There isn’t much that I personally can do about that societal fact.

The power that I do have personally is to use the space that I have to open more space for others. It’s like if you’re walking down a narrow sidewalk, and someone pushing a stroller approaches from the other direction. It’s easier and safer for you to do what you can to give them room to pass, than to expect them to do so for you. Sure, it might be an inconvenience for you to briefly press against a building or step out onto the curb. But maneuvering a stroller like that is plainly more difficult. Additionally, that person pushing the stroller is already working harder to 1) maneuver around other obstacles, like curbs without cuts, and 2) just push the stroller in the first place. You have the power to give them space and lighten their load because you aren’t pushing a stroller yourself.

Attention

In How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell touches on this concept through her lens of attention. She calls them the margins. It’s hard to miss the stroller approaching you on a narrow sidewalk: that’s an obvious obstruction. You can clearly see your opportunity there to make space. But there are also plenty of less obvious margins.

There is a significant portion of people for whom the project of day-to-day survival leaves no attention for anything else; that’s part of the vicious cycle too. This is why it’s even more important for anyone who does have a margin — even the tiniest one — to put it to use in opening up margins further down the line. Tiny spaces can open up small spaces, small spaces can open bigger spaces. If you can afford to pay a different kind of attention, you should.
Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing

If the first step of making space is noticing where you need it in your life, the second step is paying attention to where you can make space for others. In this plane crash, you have to put on your own oxygen mask first, and only then can you help others with their masks.

Just paying attention can itself make space. Having more people carry the burden doesn’t make the burden itself any lighter, but the weight is spread out so each person is carrying less. Being able to not pay attention to a problem is a privilege — and therefore an opportunity to make space for others.

To Be Continued…

Rather than trying to wrestle everything into one exceedingly long post, I’m going to split this up. Part 2 is all about making space by listening, in all its different forms.

Further Reading / References
- How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
- Make Space by Regina Wong
- KonMari.com
24 September 2020
Trump and the United States’ Failed Response to Covid-19
Prescript: I’m sorry, I hate to talk about and give space to Trump. However, I need (even if just for myself) to articulate the current problems we face as a country, as a result of our government.

Hi everyone. Long time, still no see. It’s been a bit of a wild ride recently, as you might have noticed. Personally, it’s taken a while for my brain to be able to stop screaming into the void and be able to string together coherent sentences on a page. I wanted to be able to post some comforting-type essay on, I don’t know, the resilience of humanity, but I’ll have to leave that to other people for now. Because right now, I’m angry, I’m frustrated, and I need to rant.

Don’t get me wrong. Humanity is indeed resilient, and I am so awed to see all the doctors and nurses who continue to work on the front lines, the teachers who have had to completely rework their curriculums, the people who have stepped up to make fabric masks as a stop-gap for desperate hospitals, the mayors and governors who have had to make hard decisions to keep their people safe, the companies who have volunteered to help produce necessary supplies…

I am not awed by the federal government’s response.

The Structure of a Crisis

While the scale of this pandemic is unprecedented in the modern era, it shouldn’t have been something for which we were wholly unprepared. We have had several outbreaks of diseases in the last decade, including H1N1 and Ebola. We also have plenty of knowledge on historic global pandemics, such as the 1918 Spanish Flu. One of the four transition exercises that the Obama administration prepared in January 2017 for the incoming Trump administration was a spreading global pandemic. And, because I know that most of you don’t click on my neat citation links, I have taken screenshots of the key slides from that transition meeting, published by Politico. I strongly encourage you to read through them.
The key point here is that this is a global issue in an increasingly globalized world. While some people may long for the good old days of isolationism, that ship sailed before women even gained the right to vote, and it’s not coming back as long as the internet is a thing. For better or worse, the US has been a global power for almost a century now. We have been able to shape global policy just by virtue of being the biggest gorilla in the zoo. And as long as you agree with the United States’ vision of How Things Should Be, that’s pretty cool. Even apart from our giant muscly military, we provide monetary aid to over 200 countries. This is a part of the “soft power” that is incredibly important to diplomacy.

A global crisis like this should be addressed from the top down. Response needs to be coordinated between countries, because viruses don’t care about borders. Individual cities and states simply do not have the resources—not only the physical resources but also the intelligence resources—to put together an effective response.

The Specifics

Now let’s take a stroll through the specific failings of Trump and his administration to address this pandemic, up to this point. (For me it’s March 25, 2020, you time travelers out there.)

Failure to Respond in a Timely Manner

Trump’s daily intelligence briefings started including the potential threat from Covid-19 back in January. His first “serious” public address on the crisis wasn’t until March 11. (I put serious in quotes because it was so full of inaccuracies that were immediately debunked, one has to wonder what is going on in the speech writers’ room.) Until that point, Trump had continued to downplay the severity and encourage the narrative that it was all a hoax. Keep in mind, the first reported case of coronavirus in the United States was on January 21, and the first death was on February 29.

Chinese scientists sequenced the virus’ genome and shared it online on January 11. Not only does this help track the origins and mutations of the virus, it provides knowledge needed to test for the disease. By January 17, the WHO had published a working test protocol. On the same day, the US announced their own test that they had independently developed. Unfortunately, while having multiple test versions is a good thing, US labs found that that test did not work. This irreparably set back US testing while they remanufactured the problem parts.

Additionally, tests in the US have to first be approved by the FDA. While this is good in theory—I’m not one to advocate for looser regulations—the particular process for emergency-use authorization took weeks to clear. In pandemic terms, that’s too long. They relaxed requirements on February 29, following a plea from specialists the day before. On the other hand, the FDA approved a “rare disease” designation for a company’s experimental coronavirus treatment, which would give them a seven-year exclusive right to produce that drug without competition. Thankfully, the company requested that the agency rescind that designation. America, where we rely on companies to voluntarily do the right thing.

Failure to Respond Globally

Traditionally, US interventionism means that we’re on the front lines when problems arise. We like to be seen as the ones dispensing aid, fitting with our magnanimous image of ourselves. As the oldest continuous democracy in the world, we (traditionally) want to stand as a symbol of what democracy can achieve. We want to be the shining beacon to which other countries should aspire. (Or improve upon?)

Right now, we are abdicating our global leadership role. This, of course, did not start with Covid-19. It’s just a feature of Trumpism. You cannot be a global leader if you denigrate and insult your allies, if you do not participate in discussions with them, if you abandon them. You cannot be an independent leader if you believe the words of foreign officials over your own officials. (And if you’re not independent, are you a leader?)

We have not helped other countries in this crisis. We’ve even done the opposite. While Iran currently struggles with the 6th most reported cases in the world, the Trump administration has announced additional sanctions. Because everyone knows that the best way to garner good will is to kick people while they’re already down. Speaking of good will, the Trump administration has squandered more by reportedly attempting to secure exclusive vaccine rights. As for being global leaders, it certainly doesn’t look good for us that Chinese companies have been stepping up to assist other countries. If we don’t want other countries using Huawei’s 5G tech, it’s not a good look having them demonstratively donate masks to the Netherlands.

Failure to Respond Humanely

If you can say anything good-ish about Trump’s response to the Coronacrisis™, it’s that it has been consistent. He has consistently responded with both eyes on the stock market. And look, the reigning feature of modern “conservatism” has been a focus on the health of corporations over the health of, well, everything and everyone else. Full disclosure here, I’m of the opinion that a government of, by, and for the people should serve all its people. That’s right, not just the ones who can afford to buy politicians: all people.

Trump has also been consistent in not taking responsibility, blaming other people, and sowing discord. These are, of course, all traits you should expect of a leader. Wait, no, I mean narcissist.

And even with Trump’s response fully focused on Calming The Markets, he failed to effect that. They have been on an erratic but steep downward trajectory, only showing improvement with news of the Senate coming close to passing a recovery package. (I apologize on NPR’s behalf for that article’s lead photo.) However, the Trump administration has still failed to address how to maintain a functioning economy when over half of its citizens are under shelter-in-place orders, and experts have called for nationwide orders. We are likely facing record unemployment. Many states’ unemployment websites have crashed from high traffic. As mortgage and rent payments have not been suspended, millions of people are wondering how to make everything work – and no one has been at the helm to reassure them.

Failure to Respond

Additionally, Trump has not yet invoked the Defense Production Act. This would allow him to order companies to produce the supplies that hospitals desperately need, from ventilators to masks. His claim is that some companies are doing so on their own. Therefore, there’s no need for a mandate. While some companies have stepped up to do so on their own, there needs to be a coordinated national response. We still aren’t meeting the needs of hospitals. Some companies—with an eye on their shareholders—cannot afford to make those changes on their own. This uncoordinated response also adds to the confusion and uncertainty.

Leaving the response up to states also means that they are competing against each other for those necessary supplies. This drives up prices and, again, increases confusion and uncertainty. At a citizen level, the uneven response from states also increases the chance that some people won’t take the threat from this virus seriously enough.

If the federal government doesn’t feel the need to respond to a crisis like this, what on earth do they think they exist for?

Trump and the trumpiest Trumpism

Sadly, nothing that the Trump administration has done in response to this pandemic should be surprising. It is perfectly in line with everything else they have done. Trump has led the charge on redefining the presidency as an office dedicated to the glory of its holder. (This is in contrast to the idea of the president as the chief public servant, nominally espoused by many previous presidents.) His staff and advisors exist to stroke his ego, not to actually tell him what’s going on. And if they’re not doing that, they’re essentially babysitting him.

The government of the United States, as set forth in the Constitution, is theoretically structured in a way to mitigate some of the repercussions should the American people elect a demagogue. Mainly, there are the checks and balances between the three branches of government. Unfortunately, those don’t help when multiple branches are complicit. Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Turtle himself, has arguably done as much damage to the United States as Trump has. He has been happy to go along with the Trumpist form of government, as it gives him the opportunity to work towards his own ends.

What does that mean? It means that we no longer have a functioning system of checks and balances. Instead, we have party divides acting in their stead. The problem with that, of course, is that political parties are private entities and not legally beholden in any way to the American people. Also, there are really only two of them. It’s hard to have a stool with two legs.

Media in a Trumpian Age

The Right-Wing Media has mostly consolidated around Trump, with hell to pay for any Republican who steps out of line. And Trump, for all his lack of political acumen, knows how to play the media. For their part, Right-Wing Media seems content to play the part of his propaganda arm.

Centrist, balanced media, while not, er, singing Trump’s praises, is also not not contributing to the misinformation. By the mere fact that he occupies the office of the president, there is a certain duty they feel to report on his activities. This is where Trump’s ability to play the media comes in. Take, for instance, his March 11 live address to the nation. All four of his main points were false or misleading, but because it was The President speaking, all major news outlets reported on it. Even when they include the factual debunking in the article, they know that the headlines that sell (click?) are the flashy (even if false) ones. On average, Trump lies 32 times per day. It’s enough that fact checkers have given up on trying to keep up with every lie.

My Disclaimer

There’s always an irony to writing about media coverage of Trump, as that is itself media coverage. Giving him air time or column inches is often playing into his game. It’s a sort of prisoner’s dilemma, in which not reporting leaves you behind, even when you know better. So what on earth do we do? (I say this like I’m a media person too. Which, I guess, thanks to the internet and Social Media, we can all be part of the media! We are all media on this blessed day!) My solution today is See Something, Say Something. This administration has failed us, and I want everyone who cares to read what I write to know that. It means not just slavishly reporting what is said, but critically and thoughtfully responding.

I don’t like to get into political discussions, not because I don’t have strong opinions, but because I kinda suck at articulating them. If you’re still with me here, two thousand words in, I hope I’ve at least put some new thoughts into your head. (I’m all about thinking here.)

As a reward for your perseverance, here’s a fuzzy picture of Butters very sweetly snuggling with me when I was sick at the end of February with a low grade fever, dry cough, major fatigue, and muscle aches!

Yes I was self-quarantining
25 March 2020