Americans are tuning out. That’s a good thing

Welcome to 2024. What a brave new world.

The White House conducted its first press briefing of the new year on Wednesday. Press secretary Karine Jeanne-Pierre defended U.S. actions in the Middle East and tried to remind us that President Biden has done more in one term than most presidents have done in two.

Yes. We’ve heard this before.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, remains the political equivalent of a ravenous zombie terrorizing the populace as he doubles down on his Nazi propaganda.

Yes, we’ve seen this before.

Also, in the brave new world of 2024, Harvard’s president Claudine Gay has resigned, following former University of Pennsylvania president M. Elizabeth Magill, who resigned inDecember, four days after the two sat before Congress and appeared to evade the question of whether students who called for the genocide of Jews should be punished. On Wednesday, Gay wrote a New York Times opinion piece that said, “My character and intelligence have been impugned. My commitment to fighting antisemitism has been questioned. My inbox has been flooded with invective, including death threats. I’ve been called the N-word more times than I care to count.”

Yes, we’ve heard this before as well.

It is interesting to note that she was laid low after appearing before Congress. This is, of course, the same Congress that wants to conduct impeachment hearings on the president without having any evidence. It also can’t pass a budget, and includes members itching for a national ban on abortion and the ability to prosecute women for murder if they have one. .

So, in other words, 2024 at this early stage looks just like its predecessor. Donnie Dork is terrified of a fast approaching criminal reckoning while he also whips himself into a frenzy to remain the center of attention. Part of him longs for the spotlight and would enjoy being strapped to the back of a hydrogen bomb as it is dropped on an unsuspecting countryside. He’d whoop and holler, screaming like a wild banshee overdosing on Adderall, waving his cowboy hat and loving the attention. If he had to flagellate himself in public while wrapped around a flag and taking a golden shower in used Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, Trump would do it. 

But, do not add me to those who are criticizing Donald Trump for his sights, smells or sounds. I’m immune to such scatological references. I’ve helped my wife raise three boys. The difference, as near as I can tell, is that Trump still acts like a small boy while my boys conduct themselves as men. I couldn’t care less how he smells, or what Sarah Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, and a host of other national politicians look or smell like.

I only care what their policies and public agenda look and smell like. Okay, some of them are physically repulsive, but I ain’t saying who and I’m including every politician I know in the pool of potential offenders.

But, I for one would like to move on, shall we?

We face the first week of 2024 still appearing to be as divided as ever. 

There are those among us who enjoy the division. In fact, sowing the seeds of anger and fear, some hope to erode public faith in the pillars of our society: education, journalism, electoral politics, and the Constitution. If we only dwelled online, our hope would appear minimal.

There is another way.

The last week of 2023 found me in the Boji Stone Café in Chillicothe, Mo. It’s the city advertised as being “the home of sliced bread.” Supply your own punchline. I enjoyed the area.  The family found itself there to meet my son’s in-laws as we traveled for the holidays. The café’s business card includes “Get Boji Stoned” underneath a photo of a single espresso in a demitasse. You know just what kind of place it is. The food was great and it is as authentic as the greatest neighborhood diners in New York and more so than most places there, in D.C., Chicago or L.A. 

The topic of conversation that morning was about Gypsy Rose Blanchard, the victim of child abuse who spent eight years of a 10-year sentence behind bars for her role in the murder of her abusive mother. She had been released at 3:30 a.m. that morning from the state prison just, “down the road.”

 “You know they did that so there would be no press,” my waitress explained. Other diners chimed in similar opinions. It was around 10 a.m. and the atmosphere was friendly and cordial. It was a “red” crowd in a “red” state – but I felt right at home.

No one in that diner spoke about the coming presidential race. Indeed, a friendly waitress said her parents and grandparents always told her the two things you don’t discuss with people are religion and politics. And now, she told me, that’s all people talk about. Amen. I’ll vote for that.

And while it seems we’re an angry culture, I didn’t see it in Chillicothe and I didn’t see it anywhere in Missouri, or when I visited California. 

While in the Golden State, my son and I took a drive to Ventura to see where a “mini-tsunami” better known as a rogue wave, splashed ashore. No one at Duke’s on the oceanfront was talking about the presidential race either. The food was good, and most of the conversations were of a personal nature, or about the strange, large wave that rolled ashore two days ago. Nowhere did I find anyone as angry and as divisive as we’ve been led to believe we all are.

The real world? We still have hope. On the Internet, everyone’s pissed off and the world seems hopeless. But, when people actually interact with one another, face to face, I’ve found that the anger subsides. The fear recedes. The connection expands. Not always, but enough to give me hope.

Only online do we see people wrapping themselves around binary choices. The fact is many people on both sides of the aisle say they want “better choices than we got now,” and many people grow tired of listening to the coyotes howl.   

How politicians are dealing with this apparent disconnect depends on whether you have hope for the future or are running from it. 

Trump continues to sow fear. President Biden? Well, so far the Democrats and Joe Biden have been called “bargain basement” in their strategy in various media posts, or “alarmingly calm” and completely confident they have 2024 well in hand. 

According to a recent CNN report, Biden’s folks remain calm because they think Trump is like a broken record. “You have this moment in the first quarter where he is continuing to go full MAGA extremist now in order to shore up support in his own base,” a senior campaign aide told CNN about Trump, asking for anonymity to discuss internal strategy. “While he may be successful in that effort, if we do our job, we’ll point out that everything he’s saying is extreme and unpopular.”

“(Trump) does take up a lot of oxygen right now. But most of that oxygen right now is about the stakes for him – what may or may not happen to Donald Trump, and very little about how that is going to impact the American people,” the senior campaign aide told CNN. “We have to make sure it’s about the harm he’s going to inflict on the American people.”

I think you need more than just telling us why Donald Trump sucks, but the Associated Press reports nearly the same thing. “In a strategy memo obtained by The Associated Press, Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said her team is already looking beyond the Republican presidential primary to a general election “that will be very close.” But “the message Joe Biden ran on in 2020 remains popular with voters and central to this campaign.”

“The president and vice president have a strong message that resonates with voters, a clear contrast with whoever the MAGA Republican Party nominates,” Rodriguez wrote. “This campaign will win by doing the work and ignoring the outside chatter — just like we did in 2020.”

Cautiously optimistic, or is Rodriguez out of touch with reality? Only 45,000 votes in a few states, after all,  kept Donald Trump from a second term. 

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Hello. Clearly, millions of people don’t get it – thus once again pointing out the need for more interaction. Without laying blame at anyone’s feet for this, it appears the ability to communicate with one another has receded as our ability to communicate has expanded. Facts, figures, news reports, advertising and wrapping oneself in an American flag while using “influencers” to spread the word via the Internet is taking over political communication. Meanwhile the personal touch withers and dies.

Okay, maybe you are convinced it is because Trump literally smells. But a personal touch is needed. Just consider Donald Trump. He’s creepier in person than he is on television or the Internet. The more people who meet him, the better off we all are. And, remember, It was Harry Truman who went on a whistle-stop tour of the country and that helped him snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat in 1948. Maybe it’s time for some old-school hand-shaking with less time spent on social media – by everyone. 

Facts have become far too malleable. Our collective sense of humor is far too brittle. Our reactions to one another are far too extreme. It is driven by a lack of personal interaction, fear and ignorance. 

At the end of her New York Times op-ed, Gay said something many of us have said often during the last decade.“At tense moments, every one of us must be more skeptical than ever of the loudest and most extreme voices in our culture, however well organized or well connected they might be. Too often they are pursuing self-serving agendas that should be met with more questions and less credulity.”

No kidding. That is so 2023.

I’m looking forward to better from everyone in 2024.

And from Joe Biden? His campaign kicks off this week. He has a State of the Union speech coming up soon. Those two events will show whether he still has the fire in his belly – as will the number of personal appearances he makes.