Sometimes it’s just a duck

It’s a really worn out cliche, but the saying “if it talks like a duck, walks like a duck, and smells like a duck, it’s probably a duck” can be useful and accurate. I’m also partial to William Occam’s observation in the 14th century “the simplest solution tends to be the best one”. Both have helped me gain some insight and clarity into the Upside Down events of the last week.

There are almost too many things to keep track of, too many actions ranging from the blatantly illegal to the probably illegal to the just downright dumb or vindictive. That is by intention - there is not an actual plan to make the government more efficient or to seriously implement serious policies. All of that would take time, thought, analysis, and mostly the assent of Congress. There is an intention to create fear and confusion by an overwhelming hijacking of our attention.

I started reading Chris Hayes’ new book “The Sirens’ Call”. It’s already a really interesting read on the topic of attention and how the fight for our attention is really the most significant battle of our time. He has a theory of attention that says we have three kinds - voluntary (we decide what to focus on), involuntary (loud noises or threats), and social (the cocktail party effect where we a captured when we hear our name because we’re wired to socially connect). His short version is that when people are attempting to own our attention, they follow the “hail, grab, hold” model.

First you have to attract attention - hail. This is most easily done with things that are novel, colorful, startling, curious, etc. Modern understanding of how to do this was commercialized with the slot machine and you can find a direct line to our phones and social media apps. Then you have to work to grab the attention hard enough to keep it and eventually hold onto it.

That’s one way to think about the fascist coup currently in process and it’s something Steve Bannon said they would do prior to the election - “flood the zone” with so many crazy acts and messaging that we keep switching our attention from one thing to another without being able to choose to focus. Simply keeping us distracted is one strategy to prevent resistance and create some kind of momentum to…something. Other than disruption and White supremacy, it’s hard to say what exactly it is they’re trying to work towards.

The other thing the attention hailing is intended to do is distract us from the “4 dimensional chess” that cultists ascribe to some of the more objectionable actions, like Musk elimination Inspectors General, and Trump eliminating oversight, audit, and corruption inspectors. It’s not 4 dimensional chess, it’s just blatant and obvious corruption. Some of it is legal, some of it is not. Trump making $100 million from transaction fees for the gritty meme-coin he launched is highly unethical and amoral when buyers have lost $2 billion or so. Legal and terrible

It’s not a coincidence that big chunks of the federal government that are getting disappeared are simply Musk and Trump removing personal accountability for them and their shady businesses. The FAA has issue with Musk breaking a lot of laws while launching exploding rockets. Solution - eliminate the FAA. The CFPB has oversight on consumer financial issues that might infringe on Musk’s plan to make X some kind of weird substitute for other banking. Trump and his sons engaging in lots of bribery adjacent activity - eliminate the Foreign Corrupt Practices enforcers. USAID investigating Musk’s Starlink work in Ukraine and promoting democracy in South Africa - dissolve the USAID. Rich guys getting investigated and forced to pay up on their taxes - fire 6,000 IRS agents who have collected more than $20 Billion through improved enforcement of the top 1% of the wealthy.

And the latest? I’m really hesitant to even think this let alone write it down, but a great deal of what’s happening seems to be consistent with people who don’t believe they should ever have got deal with electoral challenges again. The courts have been holding up in most ways so far and did yeoman work in resisting the authoritarian push in 2020. The crazy conspiracy theories about rigged voting machines and ballot boxes never generated any real evidence.

But the US Postal Service is a giant player in elections because so many ballots are returned via mail. If you could control the USPS, you might have a really powerful way to influence election results as voting happens, in nefarious ways that might be difficult to. So what did Trump announce today? That he’s taking a mandated independent agency, the USPS, dissolving the leadership, and merging into the Commerce Department under his direct control.

In a right side up world, the President of the United States would not be able to continually engage in illegal destruction of independent agencies or corrupt manipulation of their work. In the Upside Down, that’s just going to be par for the course.

Our challenge? Every time they try to hail and grab our attention, we need to keep working on dragging our attention back to the broad sweep of things happening and not get distracted by the next shiny object. It’s difficult since the tech bros now obliterating a superpower from within have been instrumental in undermining our ability to own our attention, but we can do this!