Lauren Schilling
It is difficult to believe that it has just been a little over a month since Donald Trump was inaugurated as President of the United States for a second time. Since the inauguration, he has — among other unprecedented but not particularly unexpected actions — appointed an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist as Secretary of Health, claimed that Ukraine started Russia’s invasion, and began to dismantle the Department of Education — knowing that the majority of the department’s budget is spent on preschool and special education programs, along with grants for low income students to attend college, should be your daily reminder that the government actually does s***. Any claims about “draining the swamp” have fallen by the wayside as well with the president choosing oil and banking billionaires to head the agencies that regulate their respective industries — apparently, the so-called “party of the working class” finds nothing wrong with their “dear leader,” appointing the wealthiest cabinet in the nation’s history.
Trump is, at his core, an entertainer, and as much as I dislike him, he is a master at getting us to pay attention to him. Think about it: how many other public figures have been able to make themself the center of the public consciousness for longer than he has? Ever since Trump rode down that stupid golden escalator in 2015, he has abided by a simple yet brutally effective strategy: keep people talking about him. In today’s media landscape, soundbites and wild claims move faster than nuance and truth, so it’s no surprise that a statement like “build the wall and make Mexico pay for it” went further than something like “comprehensive immigration reform.” Through this process, the media — regardless if it’s Fox News or MSNBC — is, in a way, his greatest ally. They get money through clicks about him; we give Trump the attention that his father never gave him, and so he says and does more wild stuff that the media will cover.
So when Trump launches an executive order changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, it is the perfect example of him “flooding the zone” of our ever-shortening attention spans to keep his opponents angry and his supporters entrenched and defensive. Changing the Gulf of Mexico’s name is a low-stakes, symbolic action, but it’s one that gets attention, an easy distraction from the high-stakes and very much not-symbolic actions that his administration has taken. When Trump does something like this again, don’t give in to his ego; instead, listen to and promote the stories of people who have been hurt by Trump’s policies, whether they are a veteran who will lose benefits because of the Veterans and Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) cuts or a child who will die of cancer because their president prioritized tax breaks to billionaires like himself over lifesaving medical research. Do the world a favor by treating Trump like any other politician — a bought-and-paid-for narcissist intent on selling America to the highest bidder.