Trump’s the great attention thief. It’s time to focus, people

Forget crypto. Attention is currently the world’s greatest currency. American MSNBC host Chris Hayes describes it as the “world’s most endangered resource” in his new book, The Siren’s Call. “Our entire lives now,” he says, “is the wail of [a] siren going down the street.”

Social media, phones, flashing screens, beeps, posts, likes, reposts, alerts, messages, pings. Our devices capture then trap our brains like balls in pinball machines. And Donald Trump is working the flippers with effective, strategic force. Messages to group chats are interrupted by whiplash-inducing, genuinely shocking alerts: Trump wants to Buy Greenland, Trump Plans to Turn Gaza into the Riviera, US Withdraws from Human Rights Council, Elon Musk shuts down USAID. Mind-boggling seems too tepid a phrase.

It’s like we’re balls in a pinball machine and Donald Trump is working the flippers. Credit: Dionne Gain

So how do we pay attention without getting distracted, depressed or unfocused? For many people, let alone their kids, fighting distraction is a daily discipline and struggle. To place our attention where we want to place it. Maybe even just on one spot, one idea.

So, when Donald Trump uses his “shock and awe” strategy of making countless radical and eye-popping pronouncements, one after the other, it’s like being a puritan in a pack of porn stars, just not knowing exactly where to look.

“Essentially, they flood the zone, and the chaos causes a lot of journalists to be all over the place, and the Democrats have no idea what to say,” one of his allies told the Hill. His former consigliere Steve Bannon described it in 2019 as targeting a “dumb and lazy” media with “muzzle velocity”.

“All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never – will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity”.

Just three things? It was a gentler time in 2019. If that was a flood, now it’s a tsunami, and we’re all underwater. A flurry of executive orders, stretching the boundaries of the Constitution like taffy. Whiplash. Misinformation. Overwhelm. Oligarchs cutting off aid to the world’s poorer populations. Chaos and distraction weaponised so we are paralysed by the sheer number of things to reckon with.

“Muzzle velocity”. Former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon (left) believes in bamboozling the “lazy” media. Credit: Nine

When I was in – largely Democrat-leaning – New York City in November, I noticed how numb people seemed, tired, deflated and almost disassociated from what Vanity Fair’s Bess Levin called “Donald Trump’s Pants-Pissingly Terrifying Plans for a Second Term”. Headlines declared: “He’s Still Standing and Everyone Else is Exhausted”!

Writing about muzzle velocity in the New York Times, Ezra Klein argued that “Focus is the fundamental substance of democracy. It is particularly the substance of opposition. People largely learn of what the government is doing through the media – be it mainstream media or social media. If you overwhelm the media – if you give it too many places it needs to look, all at once, if you keep it moving from one thing to the next – no coherent opposition can emerge. It is hard to even think coherently”.

Democrats are weak, resistance is muted. Of course, for some, it may not be about forming an opposition, but maintaining sanity, or equanimity, or any semblance of good mental health. For most, it’s about reclaiming attention so we can truly focus on what we want to focus on. Reclaiming energy without disengaging. Remaining informed but not wasting time. Resisting the pull of ugly forces such as contempt and dehumanisation. Thinking coherently. We need how to muffle the noise while sharpening attention, which is no small challenge.

This week, Ryan Holiday, a bestselling author who has written a series of books about the Stoics, sent out a newsletter titled: “Here’s How I’m Preparing for the Next Four Years”. He reminded readers history is full of times of turbulence, and that philosopher Epictetus said our “chief task in life” was to focus on what we can control. Holiday said he was going to: read old books, remind himself what his job is, raise his kids well, keep a journal, use his platform to focus on what he thinks is important, treat people well, prioritise stillness, contribute to his community, not always feel the need to have an opinion and try to be philosophical, not cynical.

He suggests focusing on the things that don’t change, writing: “A lot of people will spend the next four years fixated on trends, fads and momentary crises. I’m focused on what will still matter in five, 10, 50 years. Character. Discipline. Patience. The value of hard work. These are constants – no matter who’s in office, no matter what’s happening in the headlines”.

He is also monitoring his own responses to some of the foul rhetoric currently circling, or as he says: “I’m not letting the sonsofbitches turn me into a sonuvabitch”. This might be the hardest task in the world right now – to not let arseholes turn you into an arsehole. To not let cruelty harden you, to not let stupidity make you bitter, to not let outrage pull you down to its level. He quotes Marcus Aurelius, who wrote in Meditations, “The best revenge is to not be like that”. The point, really, is to do what you need to do to stay strong – because in times of profound chaos, strength is required – and help others, however, wherever, whenever you can.

In the late 1960s, a time of great tumult and protest, American natural science writer Loren Eiseley wrote an essay called The Star Thrower. Over time it has been told, retold and adapted by novelists, charities and speakers. This is my favourite version and one I will be thinking of often this year. A young girl stands on a beach littered with thousands of starfish, which are stranded on the sand by the tide, dying. She bends down and starts throwing them back into the sea, one by one. A man out on his morning walk questions her, saying: “You’ll never make a difference.” The girl picks up another starfish, hurling it back into the blue: “I made a difference to that one.”

Julia Baird is a journalist, author and regular columnist. Her latest book is Bright Shining: How Grace Changes Everything.

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