Like every magician you’ve ever seen, the current white house squatter is a master of distraction, more accurately, in magic, called misdirection, or audience management, in which the audience’s gaze is manipulated in order to divert attention away from a secret maneuver. Direction is focused on a chosen event, or incident, and not on that which is to remain hidden. It works because a person is generally able to focus only on one or two things at a time, the more confusing the patter, the narrower the focus, a sort of “Look quickly here at my right hand (not noticing that my left hand is in your pocket).”
It’s working pretty well for the oval office decorator.
Afraid your name appears thousands of times in the about-to be released Epstein Files? Kidnap the head of Venezuela and put him on trial.
Worried that your FBI lackeys couldn’t redact enough language to hide all your culpability? Launch full-scale investigations for mortgage fraud against anybody who ever criticized you.
Concerned that some in the military might actually think before they jump to obey your orders? Prosecute members of Congress and put them on trial for repeating actual sections of military law detailing a duty not to obey illegal orders.
Don’t want anyone to know that, for this month of March, while the US takes its turn chairing the United Nations Security Council, you sent Melania to serve as chair? Send ICE into more American cities.
Afraid that America will realize that your tariffs are not only illegal, but that consumers have paid a hefty price for them and won’t get a dime back? Extort millions of dollars in settlement money from most of the major law firms, then announce you’ve dropped the cases, and then, a day later, indicate you didn’t mean it and you’re definitely hounding them again.
But supposing you learn that the Epstein files also contain a large section of testimony from women naming you specifically as their abuser while they were still underage? Quick! Make those sections disappear.
And then bomb Iran.
Unfortunately, these distractions seem to work, primarily because, over the decades, our attention spans have shrunk by such a huge percentage that we can’t even remember the current thought of a few moments ago. We are captured, like the cat chasing the shadow of its tail, by the thing of the moment, shouted into the headlines on every channel, every blog, every column.
But we can fight it. Remembering is the key. When something has dropped out of the headlines, we can keep it in our memory. In dinner conversations. In what we forward to each other. In our blogs. And all the way into the voting booth.
Hold that thought.
I Coulda Done That
You might not be surprised to hear that i skipped the State Of The Ego Speech (SOES) the other night, not wanting to offend my weak stomach. Many, however, for different reasons, felt that it was important to slog through it.
I am imagining that those who managed to keep their dinner down and stay awake had a common response (No….Not nausea, disgust or a quick snooze). I think many listening carefully must have thought, “If that’s all there is to it, I coulda done that….and done it better!”
Seeing, perhaps for the first time, that a State of the Union could be completely devoid of aspiration, plan or policy, as well as laced with giant helpings of mumblings, personal complaints, lies, insults and a multitude of gaffes, Americans have begun to think of what they might have said in their address to the nation.
Personal slights? Boy, they would say, I’ve got a slew of them. My mother never recognized the artist in me and wouldn’t send me to Julliard. My mother-in-law talked incessantly about the person my spouse Should have married. That election for third grade room president? They tore up some of the votes and robbed me of the election.
Then there’s the “not my fault” litany. Gained weight? All the fault of my ex who never understood me. The same ex, btw, who made me go into debt over my head.
Peacemaker? ” I can’t even count the times I sent the kids to their rooms. Though I never bombed any of them. Surely that is enough to immediately hand me the Nobel Prize.”
“In addition,” my friends would say, “I am certain that I could, at least, put a sentence or two together that had both a verb and a subject.”
It’s easy if you know how.
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