Read on Twitter
I’ve been mentally half-in on Twitter today while all the Barr and Trump presser stuff were going down.
One observation: for both better and worse, all news events (no matter how big or small) have a tiny shelf life.
They blister past making brief ripples.
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One observation: for both better and worse, all news events (no matter how big or small) have a tiny shelf life.
They blister past making brief ripples.
1/
The country has had four years of such complete news and scandal saturation that nothing registers more than momentarily anymore.
The bad: Trump’s new outrages make no lasting mark. They just wash in and out.
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The bad: Trump’s new outrages make no lasting mark. They just wash in and out.
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The good: Trump’s new rhetoric doesn’t make a mark either.
He is the trailer now. He needs to get attention, maintain that attention and change minds.
And his presidency has basically ADHDed the whole country.
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He is the trailer now. He needs to get attention, maintain that attention and change minds.
And his presidency has basically ADHDed the whole country.
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We have short attention spans.
We can be stimulated but only briefly by new things.
And our rest state is pretty fixed.
No matter what happened 12 or 24 hours ago, we all return to baseline.
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We can be stimulated but only briefly by new things.
And our rest state is pretty fixed.
No matter what happened 12 or 24 hours ago, we all return to baseline.
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In a way, Trump seems to have created the circumstances for his own failure.
He’s a bombast who has so flooded Americans’ neurons with stimulation, he has worn down our receptors ability to fire, fire, fire.
We’ve acclimated and thus become somewhat immune.
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He’s a bombast who has so flooded Americans’ neurons with stimulation, he has worn down our receptors ability to fire, fire, fire.
We’ve acclimated and thus become somewhat immune.
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Trump, like all narcissists, requires others’ emotional responses to have any power.
The less emotional the audience, the less he has to manipulate.
I’ve noticed it at even his rallies pre-corona.
The emotional spike isn’t there anymore.
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The less emotional the audience, the less he has to manipulate.
I’ve noticed it at even his rallies pre-corona.
The emotional spike isn’t there anymore.
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So, I largely missed one day’s news cycle and all of its attendant outrage and yet, I really didn’t miss much of anything.
Tomorrow, Barr’s testimony will be forgotten beneath a new sugar high of fleeting news.
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Tomorrow, Barr’s testimony will be forgotten beneath a new sugar high of fleeting news.
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If Trump wins in November, this saturation and wearing down will put us in a very dangerous position.
And yet, it’s that same wearing down of public reactivity that makes it even harder for him to do so.
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And yet, it’s that same wearing down of public reactivity that makes it even harder for him to do so.
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The cement is all but hardened now.
While we are all gripping tight worried about the next few months, the die is all but cast in terms of public opinion.
Now, driving turnout is the thing to worry about far more than Trump’s mania du jour.
9/9
While we are all gripping tight worried about the next few months, the die is all but cast in terms of public opinion.
Now, driving turnout is the thing to worry about far more than Trump’s mania du jour.
9/9
