An aggravated cognitive numbness is drifting across America. We wake up clicking through new scandals, new insults and new eruptions that dominate our screens, but very few of them make life any better for anyone. If Democrats express concern, the Red Hat crowd calls it Trump Derangement Syndrome. If Republicans are up in arms, you’ll often hear of Trump Cult Dupes. Neither feel very good, do they? But this moment requires neither denial nor insults, nor timidity. It requires clear thinking and the courage to follow where clear thought leads.
Meanwhile the real problems, the ones that will shape the next decade of American life, move forward quietly while we look elsewhere.
The litany is long and diverse.
We are watching private wealth exert more direct pressure on public power than at any time in recent decades. Consider a tech billionaire mixing a cryptocurrency scheme with a national political campaign. Consider pardons linked to private financial interests. Consider a Supreme Court whose ideological imbalance is no longer subtle and whose decisions reveal a willingness to treat similar issues very differently depending on who is involved.
Add to that a Department of Justice increasingly pulled into political fights, a media landscape merging into fewer hands and major political actors shaping public policy through online platforms instead of through accountable institutions. The public square now sits on privately controlled servers.
Internationally, the situation is just as serious. We have signaled to Europe that the United States, the anchor of the Western alliance since World War II, may no longer be dependable. Ukraine is fighting for its existence as a democratic nation, yet its fate is treated as an optional side story, a burden or a distraction. That is not foreign policy strategy. That is abandoning the responsibilities that gave America its global leadership.
At the same time, the world is entering the most important technological competition since the invention of the atomic bomb. Artificial intelligence and biotechnology will determine the next economic and security landscape. Yet we are now sending highly skilled foreign researchers home from our laboratories and universities. That is a self-inflicted wound in the middle of a race we cannot afford to lose.
Here at home, masked agents with no identification have begun rounding up individuals without warrants. In many cases these are people who actually possess the correct documents and have broken no laws, yet they are still taken away. Every American should be uneasy about this. When a government force without name tags can detain people who followed the rules, the nation drifts toward authoritarian habits. These things do not begin with dramatic announcements. They begin exactly this way, as nominally legal or simply illegal and inhumane actions are taken against people our president labels “garbage” or other dehumanizing names.
Yet the most damaging feature of this moment may be the American response. We have lost the ability to maintain focus on what truly matters. We jump from outrage to outrage, mostly manufactured, while the real threats advance without resistance. Critical thinking collapses under the weight of political polarization and the constant pressure to choose sides. We cling to slogans, memes and simplified storylines that remove the need to examine facts or consequences.
Meanwhile the issues that affect most families continue to grow more severe.
Health care costs bury people in debt.
Housing becomes unaffordable for entire generations.
Education standards decline while we fight over largely meaningless culture war distractions.
Mental health needs explode.
Infrastructure decays.
Homelessness rises in every major city.
Elder care, an issue I have written about many times, is collapsing under demographic pressures and an exhausted workforce.
These are not partisan problems. These are national conditions. They shape the real lives of real people while we fixate on whatever political brawl happens to be trending.
The core problem is not only division. The core problem is national attention drift. Americans struggle to stay focused on any real issue long enough to push leaders toward action. We are constantly pulled into distractions designed to keep us irritated, isolated and easily manipulated. And while we argue online, the foundations of our democracy weaken, our international position erodes and our domestic challenges grow.
This does not need to be our trajectory. Democracies do not collapse because of one election or one personality. They erode when citizens stop paying attention to the right things. They sicken when people accept that nothing can be done or that politics is merely a never-ending fight instead of a tool for solving practical problems.
So here is a simple proposal. Ignore affiliation and manufactured conflict and pay attention to the structural changes happening around us. Expect our leaders to address the issues that determine whether this country remains a functioning democracy or becomes a loud but hollow imitation of one.
And should someone dismiss your concerns as TDS on one side or TCD on the other, answer plainly: “Paying attention to serious problems is not a disorder. It is citizenship.”
We cannot repair what we refuse to see. And we cannot defend what we are too distracted to notice we are losing.
Gary Horton is chairman of the College of the Canyons Foundation board. His “Full Speed to Port!” has appeared in The Signal since 2006. The opinions expressed in his column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Signal or its editorial board.
