I try not to be an idiot

Even though it's often tempting.

A reader pasted an article from Axios into the comments last week: Behind the Curtain: America’s big lie.

I think it was meant as criticism of me (as I interpret it): including so much about current world events in the “other things” section, and never giving Trump a break.

That’s fine. They’re welcome to weigh in. Heck, everyone is. Speaking of which …

I told this person (in the comments) that I’d think about a longer response, and then it sort of stewed in my brain for a few days.

The Axios article, written by the media organization’s co-founders, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, argues that Americans aren’t as divided and hateful as we are portrayed.

Instead, they say, it’s the media itself that manufactures division because it needs us to be angry at each other.

Lawn mowers and snow shovels

At our core, they say we’re really a nation of people who “work, raise kids, coach Little League, go to a house of worship, mow their neighbor's lawn — and never post a word about any of it.”

With the exception of “never posting,” I not only agree with most of this—I live it.

I coach soccer instead of Little League, and the lawns in my neighborhood are of the postage stamp variety, but I was out there with my shovel helping neighbors when we had our two massive storms the last month or so.

I work hard and the Murphy family is right there at church every Sunday—usually walking in about 2 minutes late, as long as I’m being all transparent there, but old habits die hard.

So, it resonates. But I also think there is another side to this.

And that side is that I do not want to be an idiot.

A ‘private person’

The ancient Greeks came up with that word: idiot, and it had a lot more nuance in their language than ours.

It wasn’t someone who was stupid, necessarily, but who was instead literally “a private person,” meaning someone who didn’t engage with civic life, who kept their head down and focused only on their own business.

Being an idiot, in that sense, was considered a person who failed at being part of society. I think that was supposed to hold true no matter how many lawns they mowed or how much snow they shoveled (metaphorically, of course; not many lawn mowers or Snow Joes in ancient Greece).

Anyway, who wants to be an idiot? Not me!

‘Nearly. Eight. Years.’

So, even if I hadn’t been writing a daily newsletter … for Nearly. Eight. Years. (one year running Inc. This Morning; seven years meeting you hear each day!!!!) … I think I’d still feel an obligation to pay attention and maybe even weigh in on things — even when paying attention is exhausting, and when weighing in doesn’t do very much.

That said, what are we actually paying attention to? Especially since it’s pretty clear that both the original criticism above and the Axios take itself are mainly about the Trump Era.

There’s another Axios article, ironically, that told us ahead of time, or at least early, what it would be like: Trump: View each day as TV episode.

This came from 2017, and it was a piece on what President Trump’s days looked like in the first year of his first term, and what he had supposedly told people coming into his administration just before it began:

“Before taking office, Mr. Trump told top aides to think of each presidential day as an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals.”

As Axios put it:

That’s from a juicy N.Y. Times tour de force on the president’s style and habits, again dating back more than six years: “The President vs. the Presidency ... Inside Trump’s Hour-by-Hour Battle for Self-Preservation,” by Maggie Haberman, Glenn Thrush and Peter Baker.

If I may deconstruct:

• It’s Trump (real estate magnate, reality TV star—it was a while ago now, but we all remember The Apprentice, right?—media maestro) ...

• … as reported by a big and ostensibly powerful media organization (the NYT),

• … reported on in turn by another organization (Axios), and

• … brought to you by another media entity (Understandably, via Substack).

What do you do?

If the Trump Show actually were (or is) a daily television series, we’d be (or are in) the 11th season now—from the announcement coming down the escalator in 2015 to present.

Irony: The Apprentice itself ran for 11 years (2004 to 2015). Seinfeld ran nine seasons. I Love Lucy ran six.

The Simpsons ran …

O.K., forget about The Simpsons. It’s the exception that proves the rule.

Back to the point: What do you do with that, as someone who writes a newsletter every day?

No, seriously: What do you do?

Nearly a decade later, I can’t give you a simple answer.

One more confession: I sometimes let the comments section warp my perception of what readers actually think.

Only a small fraction of readers — maybe one in a thousand — ever comments on anything. And I love that there is a group of people who are this engaged.

Still, I sometimes find myself assuming that the people who do comment — as opposed to the other 99.9% (literally)—proportionally represent the views of everyone.

I think it’s a similar distortion to what the Axios piece is warning about, just at a smaller scale. I’m doing to myself exactly what cable news (etc.) does to all of us!

My coping mechanism:

I try to pay attention without letting it consume me, and to modernize a controversial Hemingway quote, I sit down at my MacBook and bleed.

I try not to be an idiot, in the Greek sense (or in the modern American sense, too, I suppose).

And, I spend a lot of time thinking about my family, and skiing, and coaching soccer.

Spring season starts this weekend. I think I’ll focus on that.

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Other things worth knowing …

• If true, this means someone thinks the rest of us are idiots: An epidemic of suspicious trading has emerged around President Trump’s most consequential decisions — each time, just minutes or hours before he rattles global markets, according to exchange data. As the Iran war sends prices soaring for ordinary Americans, a select few appear to be profiting in plain sight. It’s precisely the kind of alleged corruption Trump built his political career railing against. Now Democrats, favored to win the House in November, are laying the groundwork for investigations into whether insiders are trading on Trump’s market-moving decisions. (Axios — ironically)

• Iran on Wednesday dismissed an American plan to pause the war in the Middle East and launched more attacks on Israel and Gulf Arab countries, including an assault that sparked a huge fire at Kuwait International Airport. Iran’s defiance came as Israel launched airstrikes on Tehran and as the United States deployed paratroopers and more Marines to the region. (AP)

• After a grueling seven week trial, jurors handed down a $6 million landmark decision, finding Instagram and YouTube responsible for the suffering of a 20-year-old woman who charged the platforms were built to addict young users. Attorneys for Snapchat and TikTok also appeared in court Wednesday morning to hear the decision. The verdict arrived less than 24 hours after a New Mexico jury found Meta liable for $375 million in damages related to Atty. Gen. Raúl Torres’ claim it turned Instagram into a “breeding ground” for child predators. (LA Times)

• About 450 of TSA agents have quit in the nearly six weeks since the partial government shutdown began. Combined with worker absences, it’s resulted in the “highest wait times in TSA history,” a top Department of Homeland Security official told a House committee Wednesday. DHS officials say that even if the shutdown were to end soon, its impact on TSA staffing levels will weigh on the agency well into the busy summer travel season. (Axios — yet again!)

• Unanswered questions about Epstein’s final hours: A ‘flash of orange,’ a Google search, a makeshift noose. Members of Congress examining Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide in a Manhattan jail in 2019 are seeking testimony from the last guard to see him alive. (Axios … only kidding, it’s NBC News)

• Overhyped? A new poll suggests Americans are shunning AI as a breaking news source. (Mediaite)

• Starting in 2027, passengers looking to fly economy on “long-haul” trips can purchase a set of United Economy seats that transform into a lounge after takeoff, the airline announced Tuesday. Introduced as the “United Relax Row,” it comes with three seats that the airline said are ideal for travelers who want more space, like families with small children or couples. (NBC News)

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Thanks for reading. See you in the comments.