The Soul-Sucking, Attention-Eating Black Hole of the Trump Presidency

[babylonsister]

https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/24/trump-narcissim-trancendental-solopsim-opportunity-cost-media-cycle-greatness-china/

The Soul-Sucking, Attention-Eating Black Hole of the Trump Presidency

While we endlessly watch for the latest blunder or scandal, America is being pulled dangerously off course.

By David Rothkopf
March 24, 2017

snip//

Indeed, the more we know about the behavior of Trump cronies, family, and cabinet colleagues with respect to their ties to Moscow, the more it seems we are on the verge of a constitutional crisis that may be greater than any faced in the United States since the Civil War. It’s a political scandal that may make Watergate seem like small potatoes. And if you think the 24-hour news cycle is sucking away your time and attention today, just imagine what a media spectacle the decline and fall of this American embarrassment might be.

If you doubt that the impact of the shift to All Trump, All the Time News is making it hard to focus on much of what might otherwise be worthy of our attention consider this: Since taking office, the Trump administration has ramped up military operations in Yemen and Iraq; committed to deploying over 1,000 additional troops in Syria; stood by as civilian casualties have soared and watched as a strategically important province in Afghanistan fell to the Taliban — all without making so much as a ripple in the public consciousness of the United States. Trump was very nearly mute on North Korea (save for some ill-considered tweeting, of course).

He can’t seem to find the time to condemn the Russians for violence against voices of dissent or ramping up of activities in Ukraine. And we can’t seem to care. Europe faces major political tests by populist groups in France and Germany. The costs of climate change are getting higher. And China … well, China is quietly showing up for work every morning building an economy and a role in the world that is largely indifferent to Trump except when he blusters about trade wars (wars they know that the U.S. business community is unlikely to let him engage in for long).

In short, Trump is very likely a short-timer whose moment on our national stage — even if it lasts four years — will not have warranted the degree to which it has shifted our attention from the important long-term issues that do not go away simply because we stop paying attention to them or, as in the case of climate change or Russian wrongdoing, our president continues to pretend they don’t exist. Just as the greatest cost of the Iraq War and much of the war on terrorism has been their opportunity cost, the damage done by Trump sucking all the oxygen out of the room is likely to be the areas where the resulting oxygen deprivation is causing us to black out and not attend to the issues posing long-term threats to American leadership and security … or those presenting long-term opportunities.

Trump will not inadvertently or otherwise damage the fundamentals of what makes America great. Indeed, recent events have restored hope that perhaps his story may one day be seen as proof that the American system works and that bad actors are ultimately brought down. But we need to tear our eyes away from the spectacle of this clusterfuck of a presidency and its daily dramas and periodically look up and out to our horizons, recognizing that the narcissism aside, there remains real greatness in America that needs tending, planning, and nurturing in the context of the real world — even if, at the moment, there is very little evidence of that greatness at the center of our government.

[democrank]

1. **BREAKING NEWS, HAPPENING NOW** Trump calls for investigation into Clintons ties to Russia !

Question- How many civilians were killed and injured in Mosul during the last few days?

[kentuck]

2. I saw Rothkipf on TV and it was very interesting!

All Trump all the time, he says.