The former guy has left the building.
The former guy has left the building.
Imagine what would happen if every media outlet said, "Today we carry nothing about the former guy." The actual power to bring about that scenario rests with us, the wielders of wallets, votes and clicks.
There is no liability in ignoring a bully. In the vast majority of cases, bullies are just scared little cowards. They rely on your fears and reactions to their intimidations rather than their own strength or prowess.
The former guy—and his name is omitted with specific intention—is just such a bully. He’s just more dangerous because he found ways to incite other bullies, fools and idiots to do his intimidation for him. And if things are not going his way, he throws a media tantrum calculated to rally said fools and idiots.
In the case of TFG, the fools and idiots he seems to command are also white supremacists (the longer spelling of Nazi), so their specialty is bullying. Why? Because at heart they are cut from the same cloth, that of an ignorant coward, brave only in the company of like-minded fools and idiots. The rest of the time they are shaking in the dark in bone-deep terror of anyone around them that might not be afraid of them, be more capable than them, and most important, not carry the same terror of their fellow man.
The former guy fears people who don’t believe his endless stream of lies. He fears people who see through his patently obvious manipulations and contrived conflicts. But what he fears most is being ignored.
What would happen if every media outlet said, “Today we carry nothing about the former guy.” Not a likely scenario because of the old viewpoint that salaciousness, controversy and stupidity create the click bait which makes their bank accounts grow. But we can imagine it for a moment, and possibly do something about it.
The actual power to bring about that scenario rests with us, the wielders of wallets, votes and clicks. When we realize that all corporate attention, political attention and media attention is aimed at these three things the picture can change.
When you see stories about the former guy, ignore them. To paraphrase, badly, Nancy Reagan, “Just don’t click.” You’ll thank yourself by missing out on the aggravation of having to put any attention at all on the former orange blowhard and his feeble-minded antics, accusations and posturing. And your day will be better. And you have removed one thing from his universe that he craves: your attention.
Now imagine a growing number of people doing this. Less and less media outlets would be interested in carrying stories about him if no clicks were being generated. Because the advertisers paying them for those clicks wouldn’t be. And so it goes.
Think about it. You can change the media dynamics by relaxing your mouse activity for a millisecond and moving on. Who knew you had that kind of power?
But wait, there’s more! A funny thing happens when psychos don’t have normal people to talk to and validate their rants. They end up only talking to other psychos. And then they start attacking each other. It is interesting to see it happen. But even that gets boring and more creative pursuits attract vie for attention. And one’s world becomes calmer.
The investigations into his criminality and treason will continue and should. That is useful information because it brings into view the things he has been trying to keep hidden—the damage he’s done to all of our lives. Never lose sight of the fact that his negligence and dereliction of duty cost more lives than all the past wars this country has fought. The actions of commission the grand juries and the January 6th Committee are uncovering need to be detailed in full.
His daily activities, his rants about this person or that, what candidate he endorses, what color his tie—who cares. We shouldn’t. And the more we don’t the less he matters. And that is as it should be.
We can make him disappear from the megaphones demanding our attention—just don’t click.
Marty Kassowitz is co-founder of Factkeepers. As founder of Interest Factory and View360, he brings more than 30 years experience in effective online communications, social media management, and platform development to the site. He is a writer, designer, editor and long time observer of the ill-logic demonstrated by too many members of the species known as Mankind. After a long history of somewhat private commentary on a subject he totally hates: politics, Marty was encouraged to build this site and put up his own analyses as well as curate relevant content from other sources.
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