Worried? Distracted? Try the Trump detox
Last month I embarked upon a small experiment concerning Donald Trump: for a couple of days I tried to exclude the US president from my mind, conversation and Twitter feed. This was not a premeditated exercise. In late July, I went to the beach with my family, assuming I would spend my holiday like any news-addicted journalist: cycling to the local store each morning to buy the papers, and checking my computer compulsively.
But on the second day, as I looked at the latest @realDonaldTrump tweet on my phone, I suddenly felt a visceral reaction. Enough! After a year in which journalists across the world have been tethered to the US commander-in-chief’s tweets and off-the-cuff remarks, my mind went into revolt. So I embarked on a detox.
For the next few days, I did not scan my computer, purchase a newspaper or check Twitter or Facebook. Instead, I went for long cycle rides and read books from cover to cover. I had conversations with friends that did not involve the word “Trump”. I left my cellphone in my bag.
It felt like the cognitive equivalent of giving up coffee. First, I became jittery. My fingers itched for my phone. Some vague anxiety flared up. Then, as time passed, I started to feel oddly calm.
Few of us realise how addicted we have become to something until we try to give it up. Switching off my phone showed me just how compulsively we journalists have been checking our social-media feeds as we have reeled from the latest twists in the White House psychodrama.
For US society as a whole, though, there is a much bigger lesson. In recent months, Trump has launched a number of direct attacks against the “#FakeNewsMedia”, not to mention the establishment and liberal intelligentsia.
But to my mind, it is not just these direct attacks that the media — or anyone else — should As watching the White House has become an obsession, countless issues risk disappearing from view be worrying about. The more subtle problem is the issue of disorientation and distraction.
It is difficult for journalists to ignore these missives; after all, they are public statements by the US president. But as his tweets rain down, they have two effects. First, they create a sort of shared attention deficit disorder: Trump’s audience is constantly scrambling to keep up, jumping after him as he leaps from topic to topic.
Second, they spawn distraction: the more that Trump’s social-media chat dominates the headlines, the more this pushes other news off the radar. Earlier this month, for example, I listened to Terry McAuliffe, the Democrat governor of Virginia, talk about the state governor races. Normally, these elections might be considered a big story: the Republicans have grabbed a huge number of seats from the Democrats at the state, municipal and governor levels in recent years. But McAuliffe says it has been extremely difficult to get much attention for these state elections or even persuade the Democrats to focus on the issue — “because of Trump”. As watching the White House has become an obsession, even — or especially — for Trump’s opponents, countless issues risk disappearing from view.
Is there any solution? I dare say some readers might argue that the problem is self-perpetuating. “The media should just ignore Trump’s tweets!” I often hear from friends. But this approach does not seem realistic — voters, investors, diplomats and business leaders all want to know exactly what the president is doing.
Perhaps the best solution is that we all practise some version of that “detox” trick. I am now committed to taking regular breaks. It seems to be the only way to overcome the distraction and destabilisation that plague us today. And to create a healthier mental life; call it the political equivalent of herbal tea.