The secret to magic is misdirection. Whether it's card tricks, pulling a rabbit out of a hat, or making someone disappear, the trick is that the magician is able to deceive you by drawing your attention away from what he's actually doing.
Trump has somehow managed to tap into this same strategy, but not to any credit of his own. With magicians, it is a controlled and meticulously executed distraction, every movement of the hand, divertingly beautiful assistant, and subtlety in his performance has a purpose. With Trump, we just keep getting poorly covered up bits of information, focus on them, and as a result, we miss the real trick.
People know he's a bad president, but when you ask them why, they usually give you some spiel about his character or an ongoing investigation regarding possible collusion with Russia, or an NDA he signed with a pornstar. I'm not arguing that he's a good president, what I'm saying is that these things don't really mean much. Behind all of the blunders, bigoted statements, and belabor the point, but pornstars is a man hell-bent on dismantling countless environmental, labor, education, FDA, and consumer protection rules and regulations. All for the purpose of helping corporations.
Not the economy, not the working man, but the companies who profit ruthlessly off the backs of others and at the cost of free markets, the well being of our population, and our environment. You know, like him before he was in the White House (even if it's only 25% of the time).
When we focus on his character alone, we lose sight of what the implications of that character in arguably the greatest seat of power in the world have. What will the Stormy Daniels lawsuit really do? Is a rich guy having sex with a demimonde then making her sign an NDA that uncommon? No, in fact, that's actually a big part of 50 Shades of Grey.
Moreover, it's not an impeachable offense, only an attack at his character, which won't get him out of office. It doesn't prove anything that we don't already know. It's common knowledge that he is a womanizing cheater who uses his influence and money over women. So why has CNN, MSNBC, and even Fox News provided us with 24-hour coverage of the suit, when there are much bigger fish to fry? Because it's juicy. It's exciting to think that we can take this bastard down a peg. We can't though, and even if we can, he's still our president.
Instead, I propose we focus on his efforts to cut back national parks or to completely eliminate the environmental protection agency. He has engineered the rescission of 14 major environmental, financial, and labor rules, meant to protect individuals and their ability to participate in the economy and benefit rather than for the benefit. He promised to "drain the swamp" and attack the problems of bureaucracy, but then replaced people with a background in government with people who had the same unremitting reptilian love of capitalism. He is setting this country back, and if we continue to focus on the chisme that surrounds him and the potential that some new evidence may come to light about collusion or wrongdoing, we'll miss his greatest trick.
When it comes time to kick him out of office, we won't know the real issues that he's created, because we didn't pay close enough attention while he was mucking things up. When we can't agree on what the issues are, we can't come together on how to fix them. Trump won because we got caught up in people and their image, not their ideas. If we continue to operate in the same way during his presidency come 2020, we won't have a chance at stopping him.
Politics are boring, but it's imperative that we are involved in them because our involvement is the fundamental building block of democracy. We aren't involved in the political process, we're just watching a shitty reality show.
