Trump continues to do horrible things and the number of apathetic people grows

In terms of raw materials, the presidency of Donald Trump it has brought benefits to the media, with skyrocketing subscriptions, audiences and clicks.

Therefore, it is not surprising that many people believe that its return to the center of our politics will once again generate a obsessive interest.

“When Trump wins, so does the media,” center-left writer Matthew Yglesias wrote in October.

The Washington Post’s Philip Bump recently predicted that, due to Trump’s presidential campaign, “cable news channels may soon see a resurgence.”

Even warnings about the many ways a second Trump presidency could harm press freedom tend to assume that four more years of MAGA pandemonium would be profitable.

Hypothesis

The business model behind our struggling industry, George Packer wrote in The Atlantic, “works better with Trump“

I’m not so sure that’s true anymore.

Some general questions have animated Trump’s first term:

Can he really get away with it?

When will Republicans break with him?

Will the law ever catch up?

In a second Trump presidency, these questions would be answered. (Yes, never and no.)

The constant hope that Trump can be unmasked and even fired he would have disappeared.

Thus, among liberals, I suspect, the anxious hypervigilance unleashed by Trump’s first election would be replaced, at least initially, by depression.

In 2019 Viv Groskop wrote The New York Book Magazine about how some in Russia Vladimir Putin They had resurrected the Soviet idea of internal exile or internal emigration, a disillusioned withdrawal from politics towards private life and aesthetic satisfaction.

If Trump were re-elected, I would expect to see many Americans adopt a similar stance as an emotional survival strategy.

If this were to happen, the danger would not only affect the profits of the information business.

Even if Trump thrives on attention, it would still be more destructive without the pressure of continued public outrage.

Surveillance exhausted

The writer of Atlantic Jennifer Senior recently described the difficult psychic landscape of Trump-era liberal news fans:

“I spent nearly five years scanning the campaign for threats, indulging in the most neurotic form of magical thinking, convinced that only my Twitter following was what stood between Trump and national ruin.”

Those compulsive consumers of news have been a major factor in the rise of Trump-era journalism.

“The increase that news organizations saw in terms of audience engagement during the first Trump administration was largely driven by people who consume a lot of news.

They were consuming more and more of it,” said Benjamin Toff, a journalism professor and author of the new book “Avoid the news“.

“But a lot of the rest of the audience, I think, was pretty disengaged with it.”

Since then, the ranks of the disengaged have grown. Trump continues to do horrible things:

For the past two days he has been on the verge of being thrown out of the second defamation trial brought against him by a woman whom the jury said he sexually abused, and then claimed on social media that presidents should have absolute immunity against criminal proceedings even when “exceed the limit“.

But their misdeeds have lost their ability to shock and no longer drive conversations.

That might change if he becomes president again, but like a virus, it won’t generate as strong a reaction once it’s no longer new.

People who avoid the news, Toff said, tend to believe that nothing they do can change it.

In contrast, people who joined the resistance to Trump had a strong sense of personal efficacy.

They threw themselves into politics and organizing, certain they had the power mitigate the catastrophe of Trump’s election.

But now, everywhere I look, I see terrifying resignation.

A potentially significant number of people on the left, especially young people, believe this, as does the president Joe Biden He disappointed them, it’s not worth voting for him to avoid a Trump restoration.

(On the Internet, some have even adopted the sarcastic right-wing phrase “the orange man is bad,” intended to push back against liberal revulsion against him.)

Even some centrist plutocrats have made peace with Trump’s return.

“American leaders in Davos “They see a Trump victory in 2024 and there is no reason to worry,” read a CNBC headline.

As Jonathan Chait recently wrote, holding together the anti-Trump coalition “It took maintaining a level of focus and willpower that you simply gave up on.”

Who will want to stay glued to the news of that failure?

Symptoms

Of course, as a journalist, I have a vested interest in making people care about the news, but what really scares me is not so much the declining profits in my industry as the growing numbness and despair in the face of a possible political calamity.

I keep thinking of the early 1970s, another period in which broad-based idealist social movements had recently fragmented, with some veering towards a militant sectarianism while others withdrew from politics, seeking self-realization in experimenting with lifestyles.

“With no hope of improving their lives in any of the ways that matter, people have convinced themselves that what matters is psychic self-improvement:

“get in touch with your feelings, eat healthy foods, take ballet or belly dance lessons, immerse yourself in the wisdom of the East, go jogging, learn to ‘relate’, overcome the ‘fear of pleasure'”, he written by Christopher Lasch in his 1979 book”The culture of narcissism“.

It wouldn’t be surprising if people reacted similarly to another Trump presidency.

(Both psychedelics and polyamory are back in a big way.)

The reboot of Trump’s show would be much darker than the original.

People who value their equanimity might decide it’s not worth watching.

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