Face-eating leopard or tantrum-prone toddler? It would be nice to know the answer, because it would tell us how much attention we need to pay to Donald Trump’s latest outburst. (I don’t know what that outburst is, of course. Something new is likely to happen in the time it takes you to finish this page.) If he is just a toddler having a full-blown meltdown, then the best strategy is to ignore him. Put on the noise-cancelling headphones and pick up a good book. If he’s a face-eating leopard, best to stay alert.
Unfortunately, this prompts the question: if we don’t stay alert, how can we distinguish between the leopard and the toddler? Laughing and turning your back might be the appropriate response, but try that at your peril. Trump is a master at hijacking the way our attention works; we did not evolve to tune out loud, unpredictable activity in the vicinity.
If your idea of resistance to Trump is doomscrolling and self-induced insomnia, maybe you should pay more attention to the birdsong and the sunshine
It may be helpful to start with that, then, “in the vicinity”. Trump certainly seems to be in the vicinity: he’s on every TV screen, at the top of every homepage, in every social media feed. But his proximity may be an illusion. To be sure, if you are seeking a safe abortion in Houston, hoping to receive life-saving HIV medication in Kampala or fighting on the front line near Donetsk, then what Trump says and does matters very much indeed. Yet, every day I find myself talking to people who are as immune as anyone can hope to be from the actions of the most powerful man on Earth, yet spend more time thinking and talking about him than about their own spouses.