How to Overcome Our Fixation on Trump Outrages

I’ve done a string of pieces recently that focus on Trump outrages. There’s a lot of material to work with. My pieces were heartfelt and timely. Moreover, such pieces get the most views, most readers and shares. Trump outrage is you might say “good for business.”

But I have mixed feelings about such a focus. Sometimes you just have to say something. But I also don’t like giving Trump any more rent-free space in my head and heart than he already has. Which is hard to avoid, given his gift for monopolizing — even controlling — our attention.

There was a great, longish piece by James Pogue in The New York Times the other day on Washington’s maverick Congressperson, Marie Glusenkamp Perez. Pogue went deeper than a lot of the articles about MGP. Instead of just the “thorn in the side of the Democratic establishment,” story Pogue tried to understand what really motivates MGP and her fellow “Blue Dogs,” and the alternative they are offering.

Toward the end of the piece MGP used a term from the world of motorcycling, “obstacle fixation.” It is relevant to my dilemma of how often or how much to focus on Trump outrages. The idea of “obstacle fixation” is that you’re so worried about an obstacle looming in your path that you increase, rather than decrease, your chances of running into it. The idea applies across the board. You can get so frustrated with a particular person or problem — something you perceive as an obstacle — that you narrow your field of vision and reduce your imaginative capacities. Tunnel vision, tunnel brain.

Let’s face it, Trump has a knack for trolling we liberals. Like Pavlov’s dogs, we foam at the mouth right on cue. And sometimes we absolutely need to do that.

But MGP’s point, as well as that of the article’s author, James Pogue, is that in doing so we overlook and miss other things. Things that we need to see and factor in, lest we crash and burn. MGP and the Blue Dogs in Congress are trying to get us to see other aspects of American life and politics that are also crucial and where we might sidestep predictable polarization in favor of making common cause across the divides that keep things stuck.

“Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez,” writes Pogue, “is offering her party a path out of this trap. Her central argument is that academics, economists and political consultants tend to fixate on a set of narrow, divisive issues that obscure what’s really driving alienation and anger in our society today. That angst, for many, is about a basic worry that neither party is seriously listening to today: a fear that we are losing what the philosopher Henri Bergson once described as an ‘open society’ and replacing it with a society of the ‘anthill’ — with most people living a drone-like existence, reduced to data points in a system run by technocrats and corporations. It’s a way of life that’s anathema to both America’s economic promise and its cultural traditions.”

Life in the anthill is largely about being consumers, consumers of crap, rather than being makers, makers of substance. See the article to have this fleshed out.

Another, and more pointed, version of this concern came recently from the syndicated columnist, Lynn Schmidt, writing about, “Why Democrats Keep Losing Support Even As Trump Falters Badly.” “As President Donald Trump’s approval continues to decline,” writes Schmidt,” expect the attitudes toward the Democratic Party to drop as well.

“You read that right: Not the Republican Party, but the Democratic Party, as many Americans blame Democrats for this second Trump administration. Voters understand that the Dems were unable to put the country ahead of obfuscation and identity politics in the 2024 presidential election.”

We have Trump 2 because Democrats played it so very badly in 2024. That said, the point isn’t to hold a grudge against the Democrats for 2024 (though I for one do), but to hope that they have learned some lessons that will mean Trump’s power is limited in 2026, and that a new direction is set in 2028.

Back to “obstacle fixation.” We can’t be so focused on Trump outrages that we are blind to the need for the Democrats to unhook their wagon from the professional political classes, and the rarified world they inhabit, in order to listen to people like MGP about the experience and frustrations of normal people.

In conclusion, Pogue writes, “This is the kind of moment Democrats are facing today. It’s entirely possible that Republicans will prove so divided and incompetent that they will virtually hand power back to Democrats, the party promising to restore us to normal. This won’t absolve Democrats, or anyone hoping to govern America, of the need to offer a political vision that speaks to the great issues of our age: the tyranny of tech in our lives, the financialization of our economy and the geographic and social cleavages shaping our country.”

Do read the entire piece by Pogue. It will — I promise — help to overcome “obstacle fixation” and reframe the deeper challenges before us.