A trio of distractions
by Tom Sullivan
U.S. border agents teargas migrant children in diapers. Russians fire on and seize three Ukrainian naval vessels. The Chinese hold U.S. citizens hostage to the government’s dispute with their estranged father.
Helluva distraction, uh, trio of distractions.
A migrant family, part of a caravan of thousands traveling from Central America en route to the United States, runs away from tear gas in front of the U.S.-Mexico border wall in Tijuana, Mexico.
(📷: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters) pic.twitter.com/pz7hkxsN9g— NBC News (@NBCNews) November 25, 2018
Meanwhile, the U.S. president golfs.
It would all seem conveniently timed if one were prone to conspiracy theorizing. Because on a day when former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos reports to prison, standing somewhere just out of the press lights, special counsel Robert Mueller and his team are preparing their findings on the Russian conspiracy to monkeywrench the 2016 presidential election. Nothing like a world in crisis and outrage-inducing visuals to divert people’s attention from what’s coming.
We should be glad, Matt Yglesias wrote, that Trump is too lazy to do the job, “One is mostly left to hope that he’s being dishonest and actually has a stronger grasp of things than his words suggest.” This, after all, is where conspiracy theories come from. Believing a diabolical someone is in control is better than knowing no one is. Trump’s problem is he is not competent enough to manage diabolical or maintain control.
But cruel. He’s hell at cruel.
Karen Attiah of the Washington Post considers how the U.S. press would portray Sunday’s border incident if it occurred in a non-western country:
“American security forces under the Trump regime used *chemical weapons* in a cross border operation against unarmed asylum seekers, including children. “
The Post’s E.J. Dionne comments on how Republicans who once criticized Trump’s despotic inclinations now moonlight as apologists for a man prepared to weaponize the criminal justice system against political opponents and to wave off a Saudi ruler’s ordering the murder and dismemberment of a journalist:
But all the tax cuts and judges in the world won’t compensate for the cost to the United States of abandoning any claim that it prefers democracy to dictatorship and human rights to barbarism. The syndrome we most need to worry about is denial — a blind refusal to face up to how much damage Trump is willing to inflict on our system of self-rule, and on our values.