Sadly, we are not cartoon talking dogs, momentarily distracted by a squirrel that can easily pick up the conversation exactly where we left off. Once a conversation is diverted, it tends to follow the diversion, not the original strain. Covid was a giant diversion of the national conversation and sadly many of us are still running down the path of the diversion and we have not returned to the main conversation. Some seek to reinforce the diversion. Some seek to regain lost credibility to reinforce the diversion. Which is why Jim Geraghty’s concerns that the presidential election forthcoming is going to be about anything but what most Americans are concerned about is completely unsurprising.

Geraghty is right, the economy is issue #1 to the average American, (they know better than to buy into the Biden et. al. efforts to put lipstick on that pig) but when he points out:

The average American doesn’t lose any sleep thinking about climate change, gun control, LGBTQ+ rights, DEI initiatives, or whether the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have access to enough food. This is not to say that if the average American doesn’t think about an issue very much, it doesn’t matter.

The antisemitic chaos on campus at Columbia University feels awfully far away to the average American. In an argument against my own interests, the average American doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the Ukrainian fight against the invading Russians; or the threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan; or the national debt, which is currently $34.5 trillion; or the annual deficit, which is $1 trillion for the fiscal year that began in October.

Most Americans feel a vague sense of distrust and animosity toward China, Russia, and Iran, but don’t spend much time thinking about foreign policy or national security.

he is missing the point. The economic woes we are most definitely experiencing are because our political leadership is focused precisely on those things. We should care about them, not because we care about the issue proper but because those issues flow directly from the big distraction/diversion that was covid. The problem with lying is that it tends to compound – you have to tell ever more complicated lies to cover up for the original lie.

In a world where are government officials are this egotistical (this is NOT about Trump), where fascist tactics are used to cover investigations into fascism, where they are trying to frighten us about things we should not be frightened of (the professional class will adapt) and most importantly where reading is dying, these supposedly “minor” issues matter because of what they flow from and they are, combined, the root cause of the big problem we face.

Americans should be, and many are, concerned about these issues because they relate to the economy. We need to oppose these things precisely because they distract our government officials. All this noise increased massively in volume and breadth as Americans sat at home, needlessly frightened out of their skin, leaving the asylum’s inmates to run wild. Getting those inmates back in their beds and properly medicated is not a matter of simply deciding to get the security systems working again. Each inmate has to be rounded up and dealt with and each one, their crazy notwithstanding, is an individual and corralling them will be different in every case.

Yes, the economy is THE issue. But the path back to economic sanity is quite tortured.

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