I first began to be interested in the art of misdirection in college when my friends and I went to magic shows at the Magic Castle in Hollywood. Each of the artists, whether at our tables, or in performance, used various verbal and physical cues to draw attention away from the mechanics of the trick and force us to focus on the wonder of what was happening.
My understanding of misdirection grew when I entered politics in the 1990s. I learned that many at the apex of a government hierarchy would employ various tricks in order to divert attention from a proposed unpopular policy or expenditure by breathlessly creating a stir about something else. Who can forget Arnold blowing up cars to push his proposal to do away with “the car tax”, the Vehicle License Fee (VLF). He got people’s attention, but what what he didn’t tell them was that doing away with the VLF would cost cities millions in fire and police support, with resulting cuts in police and fire personnel and equipment.
Misdirection from Washington is the action of choice now, in spades. Please do not notice that I’m crushing and eliminating the critical support on which you depend, spreading sickness through the land and crashing your planes, not to mention helping no one but billionaires. Oh, no. Instead please (interesting timing on that book!) let’s talk endlessly about what we didn’t know about President Joe Biden’s mental and physical health. Or about arresting the Mayor of Newark and a member of Congress outside a detention facility, or about trans people, or about radical judges, or universities. We fall into the trap every time and the current administration is delighted to carry on its endless actual chicanery unfettered by our attention.
First, then, let’s talk about Joe. Or rather, let’s talk about FDR and JFK. We know now that FDR had very serious physical problems in his early forties related to polio and was paralyzed from the waist down. He spent much of his time in a wheelchair and wore leg braces when he needed to appear standing. During those times that he was obligated to make a personal appearance, he would painfully and carefully already be standing at a podium as the room filled, or wave from a car no one saw him get into. He took great pains to hide his disability from a general public that would likely equate it with weakness.
To their credit, his aides did not betray him. Why? Contrary to what conservative columnist, Jonah Goldberg, wrote in the LA Times, aides are not desperately protecting their own power when they protect an elected whose leadership is crucial to saving the economy and the health and welfare of the country. They are not just holding onto their own importance by protecting a leader critical to the establishment of equal education programs, equal opportunities to work, and an America in which all may be treated equally and fairly.
This demand to know every detail about everything is a development of the current “everything everywhere all at once” information overload system. It is simply another way for the right wing to manipulate, misrepresent and disinform, to their advantage. The country needed these men and these programs in order to survive our grave problems. This was FDR and the New Deal. This was Kennedy and a host of programs needed by our most vulnerable. It was more important than reporting every detail of the president’s health, especially since it is clear now they persevered through every physical setback, and their records show the importance of that stamina.
Joe Biden was just such a public servant, and critical to his times. There is no evidence of loss of mental acuity during his terms, except for anonymous tell-all’s in this book. None as serious as those we were never told about Ronald Reagan. And certainly there was no stopping Biden’s nation-healing programs while he was President.
Why care about these betrayals? I care because it matters who’s in office. One person at the top can build or destroy an entire nation. FDR saved us from the Depression, got America back to work, used the federal government to give people a chance to get back on their feet, and helped them to earn enough to start replacing what had been lost to the banks, created permanent programs that kept us alive and thriving even well into the Twenty-First Century (like Social Security and what would become Medicare) and then guided us successfully through a war with one of the cruelest and most dangerous regimes we had ever faced. There was an understanding that the leadership provided by this particular man was needed and whatever pain he suffered to be there for us was worth it. We trusted him. The same was true of JFK.
JFK was also in a great deal of pain throughout his presidency. He experienced significant, chronic back pain, exacerbated by Addison’s disease, underwent many surgeries and had to take painkillers and stimulants to manage the pain. Before his election as Senator, he couldn’t turn his body or walk without crutches. He began a comprehensive program that allowed him to run for Senate, serve and become our President.
Yet his aides did not betray him. Why? Because the American people tend to fall for whatever they’re told and they would have been told that his physical disability and pain management somehow clouded his ability to be President. However, all you have to do is read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s magnificent book about the time she and her husband spent deep in the JFK and LBJ administrations to understand that the guy at the top makes a difference. Both FDR and JFK were fully functional and we desperately needed them.
And so to Joe. Are we forgetting that Joe Biden took office in the midst of the pandemic? Over a million workers had lost their jobs. Kids were out of school. Starting on his very first day in office, hundreds of thousands of vaccine locations were staffed by federal personnel, vaccination numbers went from 3.5 million to 230 million and we beat COVID. The American Rescue Plan sent relief to our communities, re-opened school districts, enhanced unemployment insurance benefits, increased the Earned Income Tax Credit, gave renters support to get them out of their debt, expanded the Child Tax Credit, started a summer nutrition program for children, sent direct relief to every state and territory and over 30,000 cities and towns. The list is too long, including unprecedented infrastructure investment, emergency relief to restaurants, unprecedented credit to small business. You get the idea. Did he stutter? Well, sure, but never in his commitment to us, and to the recovery and success of our country.
Now we hear that he was failing and no one told us. You could have fooled me. If this is mental decline, I’ll take it any day over the Mad Doctor Destructo Demento who’s now in the begilded Oval Office.
Here’s the real Original Sin: In order to counter the mountain of evidence of serious mental illness exhibited every day by the current leader, his staff, the synchophantic press and the gullible public has decided to try to make it all seem normal. Well, that’s what Trump is like, they say, as though having a leader who is seriously demented is a normal thing, even if it wrecks millions of lives, kills millions of people around the world, incarcerates the innocent so far away they can’t ever get home, and makes America the laughing stock, the shock jock, and the dangerous child all around the world.
Don’t buy that book, I say.
The book distracts nicely for Trump in diverting attention from his billionaire’s budget, and all the sins listed above. Add to that every other sin committed by him and his saw-wielding sociopathic top donor. You remember Musk, now trying to disappear, the one who said empathy is a weakness. The book also makes a lot of money for the authors and shames everyone associated with it. As Colin Yost put it nicely on SNL, “They say Biden may be in a wheelchair soon. That’s what happens when you’re stabbed repeatedly in the back.”
Need more distraction? Arrest the Mayor of Newark and a member of Congress for trying to see what the treatment of Immigrants is like at a big beautiful detention center. Very convenient. Don’t look at my multiple sins against the American people, don’t look at my Big, Ugly, Billionaire Giveaway Budget, look at this! Something new every day.
His Left Hand Is In Our Pockets
I know I don’t have to detail all the different overt and hidden ways in which the Billionaire Giveaway Budget is hurting the rest of us. We’re hearing about it every day. It only gets worse. The Congressional Budget Office details how the Pay As You Go provisions in the budget, when there is too much of a deficit, force cuts to be made across the board, which means over 500 billion dollars taken out of Medicare. And that’s in addition to the draconian cuts to Medacaid, food stamps, child nutrition programs, and so much more. His left hand is in our pockets, all right. Don’t get distracted.
