The Eternal Sunshine of a Trumpless Mind

In 1995, singer/songwriter Ben Harper released his second album, which he called “Fight for Your Mind.” It was a call to independent thinking, intellectual freedom, and ironically, smoking obscene amounts of weed. 

In the mid ‘90s, fighting for your mind was a more proactive process. For the politically-minded, it meant going to rallies, posting flyers, and talking to your neighbors about the things that concerned you. (It also frequently made you insufferable to your loved ones.)

But in 2024, with waves of bullshit cascading over all of us on a daily basis, it seems the only way to truly fight for mental independence is to retreat. We are drowning in useless, unnecessarily provocative, and downright fake information all day. The only way to remain sane is to back away and reclaim your media diet.

This is primarily due to the work of the 45th and 47th president - yep, same guy - who dominates the news cycle every day. Donald Trump’s only real skill is knowing how to burrow his way into our brains, whether it’s by insulting someone, by making wild, inaccurate claims, or by firing off racist invective. He lives by Oscar Wilde’s dictum that it is always better to be talked about than not, and lives his entire life trying to be the only story in America.

But at some point, those of us who write about politics just have to say “no more.” I cannot give up any more space in my brain to a loathsome reprobate who lives solely to activate my anger sensors. I can’t continue ignoring actual stories - especially ones that actually affect my personal life - so an attention sponge can sop up all the news coverage for himself. 

Side note: The “space in my brain” point is especially important given that at my age, information enters my mind on a one-in-one-out basis. Every news bit I learn about Trump pushes out another valuable memory. When he started claiming immigrants in Ohio were eating people’s pets, I immediately forgot who played third base for the Milwaukee Brewers in 1982.

So in order to take back my brain, I vow to do the following:

Stay Off Social Media 

Twitter, X, or whatever it is now has poisoned our national discourse, pushing both misinformation and disinformation into prominence. Even its imitators, like Threads and BlueSky have merely become lefty echo chambers trying to shame anyone who offers a moderate, common-sense take.

I will admit I have been addicted to all of it. When I sit and watch television, I always keep TweetDeck (XDeck?) running on a monitor, so whatever I’m watching typically only has about 75 percent of my attention. Social media, no matter what the outlet, is just a never ending string of people trying to get me angry about something or make themselves look more intelligent or empathetic than everyone else. (However, as I have written in the past, Twitter  is frequently hilarious, such as when Newt Gingrich held court on the music of Nine Inch Nails.) 

I have recognized this for years, but I live with the fear that something is going to happen and I’m not going to hear about it. I would feel stupid and embarrassed if someone asked me about something a third-rate MAGA acolyte said and I hadn’t read it. If you’re ten minutes late to dunking on someone, you might as well be getting your information via smoke signal. 

But I’m done with letting other people tell me what I should know about things. I am now going to get my news by reading newspapers and magazines like a healthy person. I am going to seek out information that interests me, not the news-of-the-minute as determined by @MuffinGrabbr69. I am not going to presume I am an expert on something because I read a Twitter thread on the topic - I am going to quiet my mind and focus on one issue for longer periods of time.

And if all goes right, very little of that information will involve the 47th president of the United States. America, you wanted him, you got him and all the drama he brings. It doesn’t mean I have to participate in it.

For the past few years, I have thought my addiction to social media made me a better writer - with information flying past my eyeballs on a second-by-second basis, just think of all the topics I could use to stuff my columns! But in doing so, I have begun to lose touch with the things I actually believe. Instead of making arguments in favor of free markets and against government overreach, I have leaned on anti-Trumpism time and time again. I have to get back to the fundamentals of why I consider myself a classical liberal and go back to explaining why it’s the right path - because neither party represents my traditional conservatism anymore.

Take Up a Hobby

When Covid hit, just about every week I would come up with some new hobby I was going to start while trapped in my house for the next year. I looked into becoming an expert in gourmet cheese. I considered collecting rare books. I bought all the tools to become a master mixologist and never touched any of them. I thought I would learn some card tricks, but a dozen unopened packs of playing cards remain on my bookshelf, unopened.

For many of us, however, politics has become our hobby. We can’t wait to fill every nook and cranny of our lives with details about who is owning whom and which congressperson LEVELED a speaker while giving testimony or which senator was on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Politics is like bourbon: A little of it can make you a much better person, but a lot of it can make you an insufferable lout. 

So it’s time for us to take up more innocent, non-political hobbies. Listen to more music. Read more books. (Especially this four-star banger, available at all online stores.) Play more card games with your kids. Start an SNL podcast in which you have to watch 1,000 episodes of the show in two years. (On second thought, do not do this.)

In order to practice what I preach, I have taken to doing Sudoku puzzles to kill time. It is difficult to both want to strangle Matt Gaetz and figure out where that damn “4” goes at the same time, so I have found it a pleasurable way to take my brain out of the toxic bouillabaisse that is politics.

Talk With Real People

One of the siren’s songs of social media is the belief that the people you meet on there are your real friends. Of course, online friendship certainly can happen, especially if you interact with people you connect with online in real life. (I started a podcast with someone I have never met in person, and I’ve had a great time doing it after around 40 episodes.)

But online friends are not real friends. An online persona is simply an avatar representing what a person wants you to see. A real friend will support you when you need it and offer you constructive criticism when you screw up. There is nothing more valuable in the world than another person who has known you through all of the different installments of your personality and has tolerated you through all of them.

Talking with real people also helps check some of your preconceived notions about politics and the world in general. It will shake you out of your echo chamber and warn you of oncoming social threats. Then you may not be as shocked when a presidential candidate not of your choosing is elected.

In Sum

Look, America has largely given up. All future paintings of George Washington should portray him as wearing a red baseball hat, sweatpants and those dress shoes with the running soles.

On election eve, a widely-circulated chart showed a spike in the number of people googling “who is running for president” in the prior 24 hours:

You have to admire these people, who are both blissfully unaware and unbothered by the daily grind imposed by the imbecilic ramblings of the presidential candidates. They are, in the words of Kamala Harris, “unburdened by what has been.”

A world in which we talk about the president, no matter who it is, is always a more pleasurable one. Create the world you want to live in. Fight for your mind, especially if the version of your brain that you crave doesn’t have room for an orange psychopath.

And if that doesn’t work, just put on a Ben Harper album and fire up a fat bowl.

ALSO:

For more presidential election commentary, see the two pieces I wrote immediately after Trump won. The first one, at MSNBC, noted that whether Trump had won or lost, he has already won because he has transformed the country in a coarser, meaner place in his image. The result was preordained years before.

(Side note: For all the people who found me via the MSNBC column, WELCOME!)

In my weekly column at National Review I noted that we shouldn’t call Trump’s resurgence a “comeback” given that all the “struggles” he overcame were entirely of his own doing. As I wrote, if Trump has “come back” from anything, “it is having to very briefly experience the consequences of his own behavior.”

(I understand that quoting yourself in public is illegal in at least 30 states, so I apologize.)

ALSO:

Our aforementioned podcast on the history of Saturday Night Live is still going strong. Just today we dropped the episode on Season 35 which is one of the last seasons in perhaps the show’s final golden age.

This episode is free for everyone, so be sure to check it out and subscribe if you like what you hear.

You can subscribe at:

Spotify

Apple Podcasts

Or anywhere else you listen to podcasts

FINALLY:

Staying on the SNL theme, the season we recently reviewed includes one of my favorite sketches of all time, the “potato chip astronaut” bit with Will Forte and Jason Sudeikis. It makes no sense, which makes it even funnier.

And FINALLY finally, if you’re in a contemplative mood following the election, be sure to check out the gorgeous new Laura Marling album, Patterns in Repeat, which echoes the strings-infused folk of Nick Drake: