The Case For Taking A Breath
Under no circumstances would I argue that the President of the United States should ever be given any semblance of a “pass” — that journalistic scrutiny should be withheld, or that he should be allowed to carry out his vision unchecked. Of course, the president must always have a robust and adversarial media critically assessing his statements, actions, plans, and policies. That’s not what I’m calling into question here.
What I am calling into question is the utility of hanging on every Trump tweet, joke, quip, and wisecrack as if it’s the end of the world. This was done during the campaign — incessantly — and obviously it only benefitted Trump in the end. Yes, when a president is uttering the quips or firing off the tweets, they take on added weight. One of them could even provoke some kind of horrific world crisis. So, I’m not saying to ignore these things. I just think there needs to be a better balance struck.
It’s been an unbelievably fraught six months, with the presidential campaign probably being the most stressful and emotionally-trying in modern history. It was impossible to detach from; if you’re like me, you could hardly focus on anything else. You might even say it’s been an unbelievably fraught year, or year and a half — that’s how dominant the campaign was in its various formations. It caused an undeniable realignment in American politics, the ramifications of which we are still reckoning with and will be for the indeterminate future. Then post-election with the Russia hysterics, the Electoral College plotting, the myriad protests and and everything else: it’s just been completely wild.
Maybe now, there’s a case for calm. Not for a withholding of scrutiny. But maybe a reversion to some kind of a more reflective mode of politics-interpretation. Something that doesn’t require unceasing immersion in the day-to-day trivia of the news-cycle, where everybody has to rattle off their insta-opinion of Trump’s latest tweet. Maybe we need to take a broader view of what just happened here, and not be hostage to the immediacy of any given fleeting Trump controversy.
None of this means letting Trump off the hook, by any stretch. (Nor does it mean letting #TheResistance or the Democrats off the hook.) It means trying to strike some kind of a more sustainable balance, where everyone isn’t constantly addled and/or emotionally depleted, because they’re so fixated on the inanity of any given day. Trump clearly thrives on ginning up ultimately meaningless feuds with the media over ultimately meaningless matters. They’ve just spent the past day and a half fighting over crowd sizes. Really? That’s the issue on which you want to expend your energy? We need circumspection and discernment, not the kind of unthinking hyper-reactivity which is exactly what Trump would like to engender.
Maybe this is a fruitless appeal, and in the “age of Trump” there’s simply going to be no way to avoid the overblown manias and daily freakouts. If so, that’s a really ominous formula. People are going to lose their analytical acuity, just like what happened during the campaign. There’s gotta be another way.
