On Political Distractions

tl;dr: Musings around the common social media claims about distractions in politics.

Like with the "echo chamber" discourse, I think there's something deeper in the "distractions" discourse on social media than it appears at first.

For those unaware, this is how it goes: politician (sometimes other public figure) does a new bad thing while being known to do other bad things, and social media erupts with a debate about whether the new bad thing is a distraction from the other bad things.

What Does That Mean?

It is rarely explained what they think it means that something is a distraction. It often just gets labelled a distraction as if it is obvious. But my best guesses at how it is usually interpreted:

Some definitely think it means a cold calculated tactic, that the politician is intentionally starting another bad thing so that you'll stop talking about the other bad thing. The theory is that they can get away with the new bad thing more than the old bad thing, so once everyone's attention goes to the new bad thing, they'll end up getting away with both. This is probably sometimes true but I don't think as often as social media tends to believe.

Maybe more often true is a softer version, more like: politician knows that they won't get away with all the bad things, so they throw as many as they can against the wall and hope some of it sticks. Trump has talked (or had ghost written) to this effect: always ask for the absolute maximum, then you may end up appearing to "compromise" and still getting everything you really wanted. I am somewhat optimistic that's what is happening with his tariff promise, that he's making absurd demands and then will "compromise" at very close to the status quo except for one thing he can claim as a political win without actually helping anyone. That's how the last NAFTA renegotiation went, when it came back basically the same as before except he got to call it a new name and declared a huge victory.

Burned Out

Anyway, to get to the main point, what I suspect people are really trying to say when they declare something a distraction is often more like: I'm overwhelmed and I cannot fight all of these battles at once so I need to opt out of this one. And that is a very important discussion to have.

The nature of social media is that it is good for blasting out and consuming a lot of news in little bursts at a time. Pair that with the extremely online left, where it is easy to be stuck digging deeper and deeper into one piece of bad news after another, and it is inevitable that eventually you throw up your hands and declare that it is all too much for one person to handle.

It is too much for one person to handle. It's true. I cannot fix all the world's problems on my own. I can't even fully understand all the world's problems on my own. But here's the important thing: I don't have to do it all on my own. Neither do you.

Sometimes I think about the modern extremely online left's emphases on ideas like "justice isn't justice if it isn't for everyone." That's true, but it can have a paralyzing effect where nobody does anything because we're all too afraid that we didn't sufficiently account for all of humanity in our 280 character post. It's an all or nothing attitude when none of us are capable of doing it all. Sometimes we need to move forward the best we can, get some of it right and some wrong, then take feedback, then move forward again with that feedback in mind so that we get a little bit less wrong.

We need to be better at finding the one or two or three things we are going to really focus on, and maybe stay loosely aware of the rest, particularly in how that might impact your few. But for the rest of the constant barrage of issues we are being reminded of, we often need to take a deep breath and decide to trust that somebody else is going to fight that fight while you're fighting your fight. You can't do it all. That's ok. Maybe the new thing is a distraction for you and the work that you need to prioritize. You might need to say no to some things because you already said yes to a more important (to you) thing. Just be careful about projecting that onto everyone else, lest you end up discouraging those for whom it is their important work.