Short Attention Span Theater

A few weeks ago, an Islamic radical stabbed author Salman Rushdie. Rushdie, whose 1988 novel (as in, work of fiction) The Satanic Verses outraged the Islamic world to the point of murder and mayhem, has been living under a fatwa issued for his death by Iran's big cheese, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini himself.

While some subsequent Iranian leaders have sought to disavow the fatwa, it's apparently irrevocable. But, even if it were, it's inevitable that some fanatics would remain unable to abide the "insult."

Broadly, the stabbing serves as a reminder that radical Islam hasn't disappeared from the political sandbox. Even as the Biden administration continues to desperately seek a restoration of the Obama-era Iran deal (why, other than "because Trump undid it," is beyond me), Iran's $3M fatwa for Rushdie's death remains in place.

It also serves to point out that we have short attention spans and a tendency to focus on only the issues of the moment. This is a boon, of course, to politicians, who know that waiting a controversy out is often the best way to make it go away.

With a nod to the eponymous comedy clip show that ran thirty (!) years ago, I offer a brief (and incomplete) list of other things that we've let slide into the oblivion of history.

• The Epstein client list.

• The Dobbs leaker.

• The Russiagate hoax.

• Hunter Biden's laptop.

• Big Tech's censorship of the New York Post's reporting on Hunter Biden's laptop.

• The southern border incursions.

• CRT being taught in elementary schools.

• Policing reforms in the wake of George Floyd's murder.

• Nursing home deaths in New York State that resulted from Andrew Cuomo's policies. Or Gretchen Whitmer's.

• Ukraine.

• The South China Sea.

• Taiwan sovereignty.

• Secret night-time flights transporting immigrants all over the country.

• The constitutionality of new federal and state gun control laws in the wake of the Bruen decision.

• The mentally ill homeless.

• The opioid crisis, drug cartels, and the War on Drugs.

• Chinese intellectual property theft.

• Havana Syndrome.

• Biden family corruption.

• The Saudi royal family.

• NATO expansion.

• All things COVID.

• The Wuhan lab leak.

• The Afghanistan withdrawal.

Meanwhile, the press does what it does - pick the controversies of the moment that favor its leanings and stoke those fires while fanning those flames, while ignoring the inconvenient.

Despite our protests, despite our belief that we see through the Kabuki, we fall for it, time and again. They're good - very good - at pressing our outrage buttons, and those buttons when pressed often overwhelm our rational brains.

Here's the cold-water moment: this is done by both Team Blue and Team Red. For proof, just look at how Trump loyalists continue to defend him, when the rational thing to do is to move on and embrace a less mercurial and flawed standard-bearer (and there are many to choose from). Trump himself is an instinctively brilliant button-pusher, both in outraging his opponents to irrationality and in blinding his supporters to his myriad flaws and misdeeds.

We each have a finite number of hours in the day, and only a fraction of those hours are available for politics and large-scale events. Many outside parties compete for that fraction, and are very good at playing us to their benefit. Awareness is the first step in retaining or regaining control of your attention. So, when you hear the hyperbole of the moment, ponder what it is they're no longer screaming about, and what reasons there are for that away-shift. Sometimes, a matter ebbs in importance, or gets resolved, or turns out to be a nothing burger. Other times, though, it becomes inconvenient for the outrage oracles, and it's up to you to retain interest in that matter. Curate your own priorities, and don't be afraid to ask "what about this?"

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Chapter 1 - A Catastrophic Failure
Chapter 2 - A Brief History

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Peter.