The short memory of an inattentive American public

Frida Ghitis, in The Atlantic:

Give the president his due: Trump is a genius. He is a master manipulator, a political alchemist capable of transmuting calamitous errors into political gold. Even as he continues to lie and deceive, the president has seized control of the narrative, taking possession of the national microphone to saturate the public with his self-serving version of events.

And it’s working.

All the fact-checkers, scientists, journalists, doctors, nurses, mayors, and governors may be telling a different story. But Trump takes to the White House podium day after day, crafting a narrative, offering the same staccato sentences over and over—“We’ve done a great job”—taking credit for each positive development, conjuring nonexistent progress, blaming others for every failure, demanding that those around him sing his praises before the cameras, and extorting praise from governors in exchange for federal aid. He repeats this until the extent of his failures, however well documented, fades from the minds of a large segment of Americans, desperate to feel protected in the face of a mysterious and frightening threat.

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This is what happens when Americans listen with only half an ear to what's on the 20-minutes of network news.

News junkies like me see his press conferences delivered in their entirety, in real time, followed by an analysis of every lie he tells.  But the network news programs that people may watch over dinner are simple stenographers.  When that's what they hear, that's what they believe.

I always cite the example of my friend whose kids were never allowed to play in their own backyard unless she was out there with them. Every morning, she would have "Good Morning America" on, and in those days of the aftermath of the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping, every morning they led with a story of a missing [white] child.  So she was convinced that in her suburban neighborhood of one-acre lots and 1970s bi-levels, on a dead-end street, where you never saw a soul outdoors, her kids were certain to be kidnapped if they played unattended, even for five minutes. Whatever gets "out there" first, is the truth.

Remember the Swift Boat Liars -- Jerome Corsi's guys who made ads in 2004 that painted John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, as a traitor?  They got "out there" first, and people who weren't news junkies believed it.  Some of that was because Kerry didn't fight back at all, assuming wrongly that "the American people are too smart to believe that".  But it was also because the Swift Boat Liars got "out there" first.


Trump is getting "out there" first.  Americans have short memories.  He comes out and cites numbers -- big numbers -- and people assume that he's on top of things.  They may know in their hearts what he is, but these are even scarier times than the 9/11/01 aftermath.  And they WANT to believe him. They NEED to believe him.  Because the truth, that the president is a man without a soul, without empathy, without curiosity, without knowledge or any desire to obtain it, a man hopelessly unfit for the office he holds, is just too terrifying to contemplate.

If this is somehow over by the November election, our short memories will kick in.  Trump will get out there on a campaign slogan of "Where Was Biden?" -- as if Biden were the president who dropped the ball and not  him.  And he will win.  Because Americans have shown themselves again and again to be unwilling to face uncomfortable truths.