This just keeps getting further removed from reality
When the Wisconsin Supreme Court ordered the redrawing yesterday of the state’s congressional map before the 2024 election, it was notable for a couple reasons. First, it was an obvious victory for democracy. Second, this was a ruling that we were long told would never happen – even after we won the Wisconsin Supreme Court election – because that Justice was supposedly just going to be removed via magic wand. Funny how that never did happen.
When the U.S. Supreme Court declined yesterday to rule on Trump’s claim of presidential immunity, we were quick told that this meant Trump’s criminal trial would be delayed past the election through some magic wand process. Nevermind that things don’t actually work that way. And nevermind that we were told Trump would never be indicted to begin with. Come to think of it, after Trump lost in 2020, weren’t we told that the U.S. Supreme Court would just let Trump magically remain in office? Funny how none of these things ever do happen.
Don’t get me wrong. Lots and lots of bad things happen in politics. All you have to do is look out your window to see proof of that. But it’s remarkable how often we’re told that this or that specific thing is going to happen and is going to mean our doom, and that we’re supposed to stare at our screens in paralyzed horror while waiting for that thing to happen – and it ends up being something that was never going to happen or was never going to mean doom if it did happen.
We’re almost at a point where the specific things the political media tells us to panic over can be reliably dismissed as things not worthy of panicking over. That’s because the media doesn’t choose these points of focus based on how realistic they are; it chooses them based on how good they are for ratings. Then the media just hopes you won’t notice when its biggest doomsday narratives never play out in the way they’re hyped.
As always, the real problem with this kind of fictional doomsday hysteria is that it serves to distract us from the real threats we’re facing. When you sit there staring at your screen waiting for the sky to fall, you’re not being vigilant. You’re being negligent. In politics, you have to pay attention to what’s really going on each day. And these days that’s increasingly far removed from the ratings-friendly doomsday hysteria stories that the media pretends are going on each day.
