The politics of distraction

Anything to keep us from dealing with our problems

I am not sure which mini-melodrama seems more absurd -- the Bud Light one or the Clarence Thomas one.

In the case of Bud Light (shouldn't it be Lite?), the hubbub is over a video by a Trans “influencer” named Dylan Mulvaney, in which she pokes fun at herself and the beer, as well as March Madness.

The video is pretty harmless; pretty gentle. But some good ole boys and right wing influencers are all hepped up over, well, I'm nor sure what.

Maybe that Ms. Mulvaney exists.

Maybe that Bud gave her some free beers.

Maybe a Trans image is on a can of beer. (Outrageous! Yet people wear the American flag on their behinds and crosses as jewelry.)

The reaction, for there must always be a reaction, to everything, is: (a) A fledgling boycott of the beer; (b) Various yahoos spouting off on social media and shooting bullets at cans of Bud (and usually missing); and (c) generalized outrage.

We are all good at outrage.

And, by the way, what does an influencer do exactly?

How does said person earn a living?

Why would anyone be influenced by an influencer?

I have a friend who lives in New York City and has neighbors who are influencers. All day long UPS delivers free stuff to their apartment door while they smoke pot. In the evenings they go online and review the free stuff.

Is this a great country or what?

I suppose one could get angry about influencers, just as a country westerner or washed-up rock star or two is furious about Bud reaching out to Trans drinkers.

But, truly, who cares?

There seems as little true harm as true commerce at work here.

This is what we might call a victimless joke in the culture wars, which apparently one absolutely cannot joke about, not to left or right.

Various rightist celebs who are either libidinously incontinent or alcoholically promiscuous tell us that family values are on the line. And the left sees all skepticism, and certainly all humor, as bigotry.

We must insist on the distinction between the left and liberalism and the right and conservatism.

The left in America is proudly illiberal.

And the right seeks to conserve nothing, save its privilege. Its members are too angry and too busy performing for each other to consider saving or savoring anything of lasting value.

And what about Justice Thomas, whom the left and the press is all over now?

His wife is a right-wing fanatic exercising her First Amendment rights. Gotcha!

His rich buddy gives him free trips and gives the Justice's mama free rent. Gotcha.

(And the buddy allegedly collects Nazi memorabilia. This seems just too perfect.)

Mr. Thomas allegedly has got a defunct real estate company that nonetheless records income. Gotcha!

Look, I don't think Justice Thomas is a very wise jurist, or even a very bright man. I would have voted against his confirmation as a justice in 1991 because I don't think he was even remotely qualified to replace Thurgood Marshall. (This was reverse political evolution.) And I don't think he has gotten much better. Justice Thomas is a simplistic ideologue.

But I doubt he is a big-time con artist or a crook.

Maybe I will be proven wrong.

Anybody can be gotten in America, once there is blood in the water. Anyone can be canceled.

And that's part of why we are not a great country today.

It's not because we are not the America of the 1950s, as the right laments.

It's not because not everyone in the country recognizes that we are “a racist nation” full of deplorables.

It's because we don't face our problems with reason, discipline and in a spirit of pragmatism and compromise.

If you want to think about Thomas and the Court, focus on the recklessness of the majority's non-judicial rightist agenda. There is nothing “originalist” or conservative about tossing out precedent or usurping the constitutionally established electoral process.

Court packing is a poor solution to a reckless, reactionary Court majority. But how about term limits on justices instead of a life-time term, which makes them utterly free of accountability?

If you want to impeach Justice Thomas, go after his jurisprudence, not his accounting skills.

We are not a great country -- we fall short of our ideals and our potential -- when we let our cities fester with homelessness, gun violence, and young-on-young killings.

We are not a great country when we put up with weekly mass shootings and do absolutely nothing about them.

Our problems have nothing to do with left or right rhetoric or demonization.

But they do have to do with the constant distraction that the left and right offer.

We never have to face our problems and address them if we can stay angry at each other and keep playing gotcha.