Politicians Want You Distracted
“The key element of social control is the strategy of distraction that is to divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by political and economic elites, through the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information.”
~Noam Chomsky
Distraction has increasingly become a main political strategy in this country. Politicians are masters of distraction. The former president has taken the strategy to a new level and members of his party quickly adopted it. There seem to be a constant stream of distractions, so that it is becoming difficult to tell the actual news from the distractions.
The constant stream of attacks on reporters, judges, government watchdogs, political opponents, public health experts, and any democrat are intended to take our attention away from stories or scandals that they don’t like. Trump has been accusing journalists and reporters of fake news, from the 2016 campaign, through the impeachment debacle, coronavirus pandemic and re-election campaigning in 2020 and now.
When outright attacks don’t work, he distracts with disinformation. During the pandemic, we saw this in his simply pretending COVID 19 wasn’t a threat to refusing to wear masks, and even recommending dubious, and outright dangerous proposed treatments, such as hydroxychloroquine pills and the random statement wondering aloud about whether disinfectant could be used to treat patients in the middle of a press conference.
The reasons for wanting you distracted vary, depending on the politician and the situation. In distracting and spreading disinformation, the intention is to take attention away from another situation. For example, in constantly bringing up Hunter Biden and making unsubstantiated accusations against the president, they are distracting from various criminal investigations into their current frontrunner and owner of the GOP.
Demonizing media organizations has become a favorite distraction with never ending accusations that the media is unfair, un-American, fake news, or coming after them. This strategy has been effectively used to divert attention from the stories that show members of congress or the former president in an unfavorable light. From the minute he declared his candidacy in the 2016 election, the former president has exerted great effort to condition his supporters to not believe anything reported by journalists. When unethical or illegal activity comes to light, true supporters simply disregard it.
This is a difficult time for the country. Coming out of a pandemic that claimed the lives of more than a million of us, dealing with inflation, and the uncertainty surrounding the many criminal investigations into the former president leaves people vulnerable. The isolation of the pandemic made many people more susceptible to conspiracy theories, disinformation, and distraction. It is really taking advantage of vulnerable voters.
Distraction muddies the truth and confuses the situation so much that many people just stop paying attention. Politics can be exhausting, and the last several years has taken that to a whole new level. The never-ending barrage of hateful messages on social media platforms, constant rallies, and speeches are the vehicles for delivering a flood of disinformation, accusations, deflections, and projections. That, combined with the now endless election cycles, has left millions feeling completely exhausted and overwhelmed.
What happens when you aren’t paying attention? Like children left alone in a room when mommy is in the kitchen, chaos ensues when politicians are left to their own devices for too long. Taking up your attention with nonsense leaves little energy or time left to question actions taken, or not taken, on the healthcare, immigration, police brutality, inequality, or the environment. The awareness that you are being distracted on purpose makes it easier to ignore or disregard.
