Another Go-Round: Inside The Donald Trump Outrage Machine
Former Chief of Staff John Kelly gave a speech on Wednesday in which he finally opened up about his feelings toward President Donald Trump. Kelly, a loyal soldier who has stayed mostly silent on the subject, spoke to the firing of Alexander Vindman, Trump’s dalliances with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, and the continued dysfunction within the Trump Administration.
Like clockwork, the news sites and media operations glommed onto the story and peppered social media and online traffic Thursday morning with accounts of the speech. Depending on the outlet, Kelly either “unloaded” on Trump or “let loose.” It was treated like a bombshell. Shared widely on social media. It had the feeling of a developing story that might finally trouble Trump’s ascent and consolidation of power.
But it’s not. We all know it by now because we’ve seen this song and dance play out over and over and over again. Kelly is an outsider now, a resigned member of the administration. Because he waited until he was on the outside looking in, this is nothing more than an attempt to rehabilitate his image after having served as a willing soldier in an administration that caged children and troubled the Constitution at every turn. Kelly played his role. He weakened national security, helped attack our intelligence, assisted in giving Trump more and more power to the detriment of everyone.
It’s not hard to see how this will play out. Trump’s faithful will have already moved Kelly from the ranks of the faithful to a sinister plant in the Deep State conspiracy by the time this story posts. Fox News is probably airing a segment right now attacking Kelly’s character and lauding Trump for having achieved so much with a subversive force in the office next door. This will happen because cults are nothing if not predictable. Their ecosystems are so brittle and so constantly on the verge of utter collapse that anybody even questioning the dear leader must be excommunicated and turned into the embodiment of the Devil lest the entire thing fall apart.
But it’s the cycle playing out among Trump’s critics that is most vexing. We’ve seen this play before. We’ve all been actors in it. By the end of Thursday we’ll probably not even remember Kelly’s speaking out besides some faint recalls in the cable news pundit blocks tonight. It’ll be added to the neverending list of reasons why Trump is dangerous, more fodder for people wary of him to be more wary.
What is happening is that we are participating in a ceaseless media cycle that is designed to stoke anxiety, fear, and uncertainty and turn them into clicks, retweets, views, and advertising dollars. It is a profit strategy. That’s the only way to describe it. And that Trump has incorporated himself into that cycle is no surprise. Trump is an anxiety machine. He is a chaos creator of the highest magnitude. Trump gifts the media a supply of controversies and clickbait headlines that will never stop until his own heart stops. He’s dead right when he says the media is hopelessly addicted to him. They have been for years now, and the prospect of losing their lovely chaos machine is too much for many of them to bear.
We have to change the way we consume news and information. We are addicts in this go-round, hopelessly paying to have our worst fears and terrors realized in the media. It’s not hard to play us. We’re instruments that are user-friendly. Just take whatever Trump said at his presser today, whatever someone like Kelly has said in a speech somewhere he got handsomely paid for, and turn it into a headline. It’ll circle for a twenty-four cycle and then disappear like so much smoke. We are paying for our own destruction one day at a time.
To escape this cycle and escape our own societal decline, we have to begin recognizing our part in this madness. The news and media can only peddle this nonsense so long as we remain oblivious to our role. It is a quiet and maddening business that only survives as long as we permit it. We must recognize the patterns and reject the everpresent hum.
Kelly’s comments are fine and needed, but let’s not pretend they’re going to bring down this presidency. They’re just more of the same that we’ve already seen. Confirmation of what we already know. Nothing is going to change, no progress is going to be made, until we remove ourselves from the Donald Trump Outrage Machine and accept that politics and the business of society is our responsibility.
No one is coming to save us. This fight is on us. And we’d better get fighting fast.
Jared Yates Sexton is an author and political analyst whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, Politico, The Daily Beast, and elsewhere. Most recently he’s the author of American Rule: How A Nation Conquered The World But Failed Its People, available for pre-order from Dutton/Penguin-Random House.