“Politics is a sideshow in the great circus of life.” --Robert Dahl, American political scientist
I don’t want to hear about it. Read about it. Watch it. Period.
Yes, I’m trying my best to be on a news embargo this week when it comes to the indictment of…you know who I’m talking about. The guy. Oversized tie. Loves McDonalds. Owns a tower.
I’m trying my best to ignore just what he is being indicted for. Is it for some complicated illegal plan? A backroom conspiracy worthy of Watergate like press attention? Nope. In 34 felony counts he’s accused of paying off or suppressing with hush money the stories of….1) His supposed mistress, an actress in pornographic films. 2)A doorman who claims to know about his other extramarital affairs and 3) A Playboy playmate of the year who says she had an affair with him as well.
You can’t make this stuff up.
The depressing part, at least for me, is that the sideshow accompanying this legal action against an ex-President is being supersized in importance by the media, by other politicians, by comedians, by pundits, by seemingly anyone (I suppose myself included) with an opinion on the situation.
I apologize if I, by writing this, am also a part of the problem.
The 45th President is not the first President to be indicted. Ulysses S. Grant was arrested in 1872 in Washington D.C. for speeding in a horse-drawn carriage. He was apparently having a ball, racing through the streets of the capital. Grant was taken to the courthouse (he actually gave the arresting cop a ride) and put up $20 bail. When he failed to show up the next day, he forfeited the money. That was the end of his saga. President Richard Nixon almost certainly would have been indicted for his role in Watergate but that was short-circuited by President Gerald Ford who pardoned him for all those alleged crimes. At least Nixon resigned from office and slipped off into semi-retirement in California. He knew when the show was over and when it was time to exit—stage left.
I know there are lots of folks who are convinced this is the story of the moment and therefore it deserves all the coverage it gets, even as it sucks up every whiff or oxygen in the room called American life. Anybody else suffocating? I know an argument could be made that this is big news, what must be the lead, 24/7, at least for the next few weeks.
Me? I’m not so sure. I think of the stories that really, really matter and that deserve continuing coverage much more, but have been bumped from page 1. Have we already forgotten the six who died in a Nashville school, killed by an AR-15 wielding assailant? Or how school and mass shootings are now so common? Or how about the war in Ukraine? The fact that global warming is causing the accelerated melting of the world’s glaciers, with half of them projected to be gone by the end of the century.
The indictment story has been raised to a fever pitch, to breathlessly breaking news by every major and minor media outlet. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad and singular a moment in the history of our nation. Maybe we are focusing on this political soap opera because we don’t have the attention span or the civic right stuff to actually take on and solve, together, real issues. Maybe we are just getting the leaders that we deserve, that the problem isn’t the idea and ideal of democracy. The problem is the cast of circus performers we keep electing to office. The ones who desire power more than public service and infamy more than humility.
And that’s on both sides of the aisle.
But this is what our politics have come to. You might even say that politics is the new religion. As David Brooks observed in a 2020 New York Times column, published just before the Presidential election, “Politics has become a way to define and signify your identity, and that is elevating politics to too central a place in life.” As central now, maybe, as religion once was in American life.
The numbers reflect this changing reality. A Wall Street Journal/National Opinion Research Center poll revealed last week that the number of Americans who view religion as “an important value” has dropped precipitously, from 62 percent in 1998, to 39 percent in 2023. If folks aren’t going to church or synagogue or mosque to contemplate ultimate meaning, to be in community, and to work together for change, are they now finding this communal identity in rabid partisanship? In being a Democrat or a Republican, a liberal or progressive or conservative or moderate?
How else to explain our cultural and media fascination with a person who hasn’t even sat in the Oval Office in for more than 800 days, two plus years?! Is it about entertainment? Scandal? Being riveted to the news, like watching a car wreck in real time? I just don’t get it, not at all. Then again, I don’t get the Kardashians or Survivor or The Real Housewives of Wherever TV shows either.
Wake me up when the circus is finally over and when the circus leaves town. Wake me when we are more interested in following leaders who have integrity, wisdom, and decency, and who work for the common good, and not just their own narrow partisan beliefs. God help us all.
Until then? I’m loving my podcasts and reruns of CSI Las Vegas.
For now, no news is good news.
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