Are Our Fixations Blinding Us?

Sadly, our entire media landscape is completely fixated on Trump right now.  Every news report seems to have to do with him.  Nearly every tweet he sends makes headlines around the country.  Hardly a word comes out of his mouth that the media doesn’t feel the need to dissect.  Yes, we have great reason to be concerned (see my previous post for more on this), but is it worth such a blinding focus?

I’m not sure it is.
Think about it.  Really think about it.  We’re so fixated on Trump, on his past, present, and future, that we’re ignoring virtually everything else.  The few news reports that don’t have to do with Trump are tossed aside without further investigation because our new president is all that matters.  But still other newsworthy items are simply ignored by our media because they aren’t about Trump.  For example, a few weeks ago, some twenty million Muslims marched through Iraq for the Holy Day of Arbaeen, in open defiance of ISIS, who has been attacking those making this annual pilgrimage.  Our media completely ignored this remarkable show of solidarity amongst Muslims, despite the fact that it deals a deadly blow to Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric.

That’s the real problem here.  We’re becoming so obsessed with the latest reports on Trump that we are not paying any attention to anything else.  We’re not willing to discuss or investigate anything unless it has to do with Trump.  We have been led to believe that nothing else matters, which could not be less true.  But why?  Why are we being led this way?  Why do we let our fervor guide us?  I see two explanations for this: Trump’s perverse need for attention, and the fact that politicians like us to be distracted.

The first is perhaps the most obvious.  Trump craves attention the way an alcoholic craves alcohol; so, naturally, he is glorying in all the attention, even when it’s negative.  As a textbook narcissist (multiple psychologists and psychiatrists have noted that he meets all the criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder), he must be the center of attention.  Moreover, as any publicist will tell you, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.  He can take bad publicity and spin it to paint his accusers as mean-spirited people who just want to take him down.  Because his supporters are so enamored with him, they buy this, which leads to two things: them attacking his accusers (which he considers nothing short of adulation), and his opponents hitting back.  This, of course, then just leads into pointless arguments because they accomplish nothing and go nowhere.  The only winner is Trump because he gets the attention he so desperately craves.

The second explanation is not as obvious, but it is in many ways the more dangerous.  Throughout history, leaders have maintained power by keeping the masses uneducated.  By doing this, they don’t often question their leaders, and the commoners will instead resort to infighting.  They want the commoners to fight amongst themselves, to argue over trivialities, because it distracts them and allows them to purse their true agenda unhindered.  It is painfully easy to see this in a historical context; in medieval Europe, for example, the monarchs only allowed the elite to be educated because too many educated people presented a threat to their power.  Even within the church, very few people were educated or even literate.  This, again, was done to help them maintain power.  If people must get information from others instead of finding it for themselves, they are easy to control and manipulate.

We can see this in the present day as well.  Dictators around the world have a stranglehold on the media and educational systems in their country.  Doing so allows them to spread propaganda and make it so the commoners cannot question them.  A perfect example of this is North Korea.  Following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, Kim Jong-Un has complete control over the media and the education in North Korea.  Just as it is nearly impossible to get information about the outside world, it is also nearly impossible for citizens of North Korea to get truthful, factual information on their own government.  Wired ran a fascinating, albeit disturbing, article on how people are combatting this, and it’s well worth the read: https://www.wired.com/2015/03/north-korea/.

So how does this apply to our current obsession with Trump?  It’s actually quite simple.  By obsessing over him, by refusing to discuss anything other than him, we are actually playing directly into his hands.  He wants us to obsess over him, and it’s more than just feeding his narcissism.  One of the ways that authoritarians consolidate power is through the media.  They disparage mainstream media so that their supporters will only trust media outlets that they can control.  Doing so gives them control over the media, which means control over the masses because the masses will only know what they want them to know.

That is exactly what Trump is doing now.  He spent nearly the entire campaign slamming mainstream media, claiming that every negative thing they said about him was a lie (even though most of it was actually based in fact, if a bit exaggerated).  As such, his supporters started migrating to media outlets that he was okay with, such as Breitbart and other hard-right news.  Most of these sources cannot be trusted simply because their credibility is so low due to bad reporting and a general refusal to give credible sources for their reports.  Breitbart’s problem isn’t so much bad reporting as it is that Steve Bannon, their former editor, is a close friend of Trump, and was recently appointed to be Chief Strategist and Senior Counsel.  Even if he no longer works for Breitbart, they will always be sympathetic to him and will no doubt continue with their pro-Trump reporting simply because Bannon is on his arm.

This may seem disturbing on its face, but dive deeper and it will send chills up your spine.  Gaining control of the media is actually one of the first steps on the road to fascism (for a more in-depth analysis of the markers of fascism, read this list compiled by a former Mussolini loyalist: http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/trump-eerily-perfect-match-famous-14-point-guide-identify-fascist-leaders).  By controlling the media, you control every narrative, meaning that even negative reports about you get the spin you want, if they even get out.  Moreover, people cannot find out things you want covered up because journalists aren’t allowed to report them.  In countries like China and Saudi Arabia, journalists are regularly imprisoned and even executed simply for reporting things that put the government in a bad light.  We may not be there yet, but with Trump’s notoriously thin skin, there’s no telling how retributive he will be against journalists who report against him once he’s in power.

This is why I’m so scared of what a Trump presidency may mean for this country.  We are already playing into his hands by obsessing over every word out of his mouth and every tweet he sends.  This blindness is in fact exactly what he wants, both because he’s a narcissist and because he is a fascist.  This is why we must fight against this, against him.  We must stop obsessing over him and focus on truly important issues.  Yes, we need to pay attention to him, but he is but one piece in a global puzzle that is dangerously close to falling apart.  Diplomatic relations around the world are hanging by a thread right now.  Wars are destroying Syria and Iraq.  Climate change is threatening the extinction of millions of species, including us.  Our own country has numerous issues that must be addressed, such as healthcare, economic issues, energy creation, droughts, poverty, and gun violence.  Yet we quibble over trivialities.

That is exactly what Trump wants, and exactly what leaders have done for thousands of years.  They keep the masses arguing amongst themselves so they can do what they want with as little resistance as possible.  By continuing this, we play into his hands and allow a fascist to gain power.  It is exactly the way dictators have always gained power, and we must open our eyes to this before it is too late.  Don’t let him be the center of attention.  The only attention he deserves is that which exposes anything he wants to do that is contrary to the interests of the people of this country and this world.  Anything else serves only to feed his narcissism, which will only make him more dangerous.

The best way to defeat a narcissist is to ignore them.  They will be done in by their self-obsession, just as Narcissus himself was.