“Big Statement By Donald Trump”
Yesterday the phrase “Big Statement By Donald Trump” began trending on Twitter in response to a video clip of Trump condemning the Affordable Care Act. It prompted a number of people to conclude that Trump was back out on the campaign trail. It further prompted some people to question me for having recently said that Trump’s handlers had pulled him off the campaign trail.
But here’s the thing. Trump didn’t give a speech yesterday. He didn’t hold a rally. He didn’t appear in public. Trump’s supporters decided to dig up a years-old clip of him and promote it because it was the anniversary of Obamacare. This should have been immediately obvious to everyone, given that Trump spent much of the video clip ranting about “Crooked Hillary.”
But because there’s such a “react first, think later” mentality on the internet, a ton of people saw a clip of Trump supposedly holding a new rally yesterday, and immediately flew off the emotional handle about it. “Oh no, Trump is back on the campaign trail today, and he doesn’t sound as senile now, we’re doomed!”
A lot of people think they’re being “vigilant” when they react this way to everything that happens. But really, when Trump’s people are recycling a years-old clip of Trump in an apparent attempt at distracting from the fact that Trump has disappeared from the campaign trail, “vigilance” means not falling for it.
Vigilance means reacting to the right things. The things that are of consequence. The things that will still matter in a week. The real things. Not just the things that on first blush seem to be the most scary. When you fly off the handle in panicked negative fashion about everything, you’re not being vigilant, you’re just muddying the waters. And if you immediately fly off the handle about things that aren’t even real, because you didn’t take ten seconds to logically think it through before emotionally reacting to it, you’re being gullible.
This is an important distinction, because we’re about to head into a much more complex degree of emotional manipulation and political trickery as we head into the 2024 election. What we’re about to get hit with will make yesterday’s simplistic “Big Statement By Donald Trump” thing look like child’s play.
Let’s all take a moment to remember that “vigilance” means not automatically falling for every scary tale that the other side, or even the media on our side, tries to throw at us. The most effective way to fight back against the actual bad things is to make sure we’re not wasting our time on the imaginary bad things. Let’s be sure to keep our eye on the ball. Now let’s go win this.
