Well, I limit my exposure to Donald Trump by focusing only on corroborated news coverage (from multiple sources).
Thankfully, commenting (and reading comments) on The Line, on Paul Wells' Substack, as well as two others, as well as on the FT, are "it" when it comes to my social media experience these days.
The likes of Facebook, X and their competitors? No thanks. Too much of what you discussed in this article. Lots of heat, very little light. And, of course, juvenile "flame wars".
The fantastic blog Infinite Scroll, written by Jeremiah Johnson, called out the endgame of the attention economy way back in 2023. He focuses on MrBeast, not Trump, but it’s the same idea. I highly recommend reading this.
I understand Jon Haidt’s next book will be about this, once he’s done with the follow-ups from The Anxious Generation.
At some point we’ll realize that the “logical conclusion of our information economy now being dominated by powerful tech companies whose platforms offer no challenge function prior to publication and whose business models are predicated on the mass harvesting of human attention” (brilliantly phrased by the author here) is incompatible with a functioning democracy. Our chimp brains cannot handle infinite zero-cost publishing directly to supercomputers in our pockets.
The US will not survive the damage these two imbeciles have done. Now, a manufactured crisis is taking place that inevitably leads to the cancellation of midterm elections, martial law and who knows what else...all because the American legal system was so pathetic as to allow a twice-charged traitor to escape a courtroom. Elon would love Vance as president....his long relationship with Peter Thiel restored, and American democracy finished.
This entire spectacle, a billionaire and a sitting president tearing each other apart on their own digital coliseums, would be farcical if it weren’t such an accurate diagnosis of where American governance now resides: somewhere between a reality show and a burning library. The Trump–Musk slugfest isn’t just a grotesque circus; it’s the endpoint of a political culture that stopped valuing deliberation and started worshiping noise. What once passed for debate is now gladiatorial combat for clicks. If Cicero were resurrected today, he’d be booed off stage for being too slow to post.
What’s bleakest about this isn’t just the slapstick immaturity on display from two of the most powerful men in the world, but how un-shocking it feels. Their fight didn’t break the internet; it barely cracked the day’s top trending topics. That’s how numb we’ve become. A possible implication of Epstein’s files against a former president? A threat to cancel billion-dollar aerospace programs out of spite? We scroll past it like weather. And meanwhile, the original topic — the exploding U.S. budget and the crumbling pillars of fiscal discipline — gets buried under the rubble of pettiness and memes.
In the Star Trek episode “Bread and Circuses”, Captain Kirk discovers a parallel Earth where the Roman Empire never fell and its gladiatorial games have become televised entertainment, watched by a complacent, numbed populace. The show's genius was how it wrapped its cultural critique in something campy and digestible. But we don’t need metaphor anymore; we’ve created our own Colosseum, and now we cheer as our emperors fight each other in it. The question isn’t whether democracy can survive attention capitalism; it’s whether the citizenry still cares to bother with the long, slow work of self-government when the drama is just so much more fun to watch.
Apropos this sensible article, there was a snippet in today's news somewhere that a judge reinstated Trump's Ex Order that banned AP from various WH briefing venues. Not all of them but most. I think the absolute best answer to that would be a boycott by the press of all WH briefing venues for a day or a week. Having no one listening to the barrage of lies and misstatements for a full day would be delightful. We could think about other things for that day, which would be cleansing.
I know this is insane as the right wing mouthpieces of the administration would blather on about the fecklessness of the lefties and normies who can't even listen to the day's brilliant unfolding of the New Jerusalem as brought forth by DJT.
But still, it would be pleasant getting no news from the WH for a day. This includes the agencies involved not reporting on social media ravings and so forth. Just nothing reported at all.
I agree if WWIII starts, I suppose we'll have bin this idea but absent that it at least a dream of a "no Trump" Day.
I can absolutely look away, but maybe I spent a lot of time with entitled douchebags; being desensitized has advantages. (Hoping all those years looking into the abyss left me unsullied...)
Well, I limit my exposure to Donald Trump by focusing only on corroborated news coverage (from multiple sources).
Thankfully, commenting (and reading comments) on The Line, on Paul Wells' Substack, as well as two others, as well as on the FT, are "it" when it comes to my social media experience these days.
The likes of Facebook, X and their competitors? No thanks. Too much of what you discussed in this article. Lots of heat, very little light. And, of course, juvenile "flame wars".
The fantastic blog Infinite Scroll, written by Jeremiah Johnson, called out the endgame of the attention economy way back in 2023. He focuses on MrBeast, not Trump, but it’s the same idea. I highly recommend reading this.
https://www.infinitescroll.us/p/the-internet-is-for-extremism-repost
I understand Jon Haidt’s next book will be about this, once he’s done with the follow-ups from The Anxious Generation.
At some point we’ll realize that the “logical conclusion of our information economy now being dominated by powerful tech companies whose platforms offer no challenge function prior to publication and whose business models are predicated on the mass harvesting of human attention” (brilliantly phrased by the author here) is incompatible with a functioning democracy. Our chimp brains cannot handle infinite zero-cost publishing directly to supercomputers in our pockets.
The US will not survive the damage these two imbeciles have done. Now, a manufactured crisis is taking place that inevitably leads to the cancellation of midterm elections, martial law and who knows what else...all because the American legal system was so pathetic as to allow a twice-charged traitor to escape a courtroom. Elon would love Vance as president....his long relationship with Peter Thiel restored, and American democracy finished.
This entire spectacle, a billionaire and a sitting president tearing each other apart on their own digital coliseums, would be farcical if it weren’t such an accurate diagnosis of where American governance now resides: somewhere between a reality show and a burning library. The Trump–Musk slugfest isn’t just a grotesque circus; it’s the endpoint of a political culture that stopped valuing deliberation and started worshiping noise. What once passed for debate is now gladiatorial combat for clicks. If Cicero were resurrected today, he’d be booed off stage for being too slow to post.
What’s bleakest about this isn’t just the slapstick immaturity on display from two of the most powerful men in the world, but how un-shocking it feels. Their fight didn’t break the internet; it barely cracked the day’s top trending topics. That’s how numb we’ve become. A possible implication of Epstein’s files against a former president? A threat to cancel billion-dollar aerospace programs out of spite? We scroll past it like weather. And meanwhile, the original topic — the exploding U.S. budget and the crumbling pillars of fiscal discipline — gets buried under the rubble of pettiness and memes.
In the Star Trek episode “Bread and Circuses”, Captain Kirk discovers a parallel Earth where the Roman Empire never fell and its gladiatorial games have become televised entertainment, watched by a complacent, numbed populace. The show's genius was how it wrapped its cultural critique in something campy and digestible. But we don’t need metaphor anymore; we’ve created our own Colosseum, and now we cheer as our emperors fight each other in it. The question isn’t whether democracy can survive attention capitalism; it’s whether the citizenry still cares to bother with the long, slow work of self-government when the drama is just so much more fun to watch.
Apropos this sensible article, there was a snippet in today's news somewhere that a judge reinstated Trump's Ex Order that banned AP from various WH briefing venues. Not all of them but most. I think the absolute best answer to that would be a boycott by the press of all WH briefing venues for a day or a week. Having no one listening to the barrage of lies and misstatements for a full day would be delightful. We could think about other things for that day, which would be cleansing.
I know this is insane as the right wing mouthpieces of the administration would blather on about the fecklessness of the lefties and normies who can't even listen to the day's brilliant unfolding of the New Jerusalem as brought forth by DJT.
But still, it would be pleasant getting no news from the WH for a day. This includes the agencies involved not reporting on social media ravings and so forth. Just nothing reported at all.
I agree if WWIII starts, I suppose we'll have bin this idea but absent that it at least a dream of a "no Trump" Day.
Watching these two in action is just painful.....
Will the pendulum ever swing back to sanity?
I can absolutely look away, but maybe I spent a lot of time with entitled douchebags; being desensitized has advantages. (Hoping all those years looking into the abyss left me unsullied...)
p.s. It's fun firing them for cause.