Trump and the Rosie-ODonnellisation of America

What do you know about Chancellor Merkels visit to the United States? Let me guess: Donald Trump did not shake Merkels hand at the official photo op. At the joint press conference, he made an awkward joke about how they both had been spied on by the Obama administration. Afterwards, in a couple of Trump tweets demonstrated his ignorance of how NATO works.

In other words, you know nothing that matters.

It is instructive to see how much less upset German media were about the refused handshake. As far as I can see, it was really a minor event, if it was reported at all. (The Frankfurter Allgemeine posted, on its title page no less, a picture from the very same photo op, showing him leaning to her in a welcoming way. Had you seen this picture before? Me neither.)

Instead, discussions in Germany were devoted, to a larger extent at least, to matters of substance: Would Merkel be able to get the United States to commit to free trade? Would they find common ground on Ukraine, on the refugee crisis? Will the US and Trump still support the Western Alliance and the EU?

The reason for the calmer, and more substantive, German reporting is certainly not that Germans view Trump more favorably than we do. The reaction to his election in Europe was quite comparable to that among liberals here, somewhere between incredulity and shock. Germans do not think that Trump is normal any more than we do.

Nor does the reason lie in a higher quality of German media. Since the relative decline of weekly magazines Spiegel and Stern, Germany has had little investigative journalism to match that of the New York Times and the Washington Post. Occasional exceptions like the Panama Papers , which were leaked to journalists for the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung last year, rather prove the rule.

But of course chances are you have already forgotten about the Panama Papers. Instead, most of us have for months been so caught up in the daily frenzy of the Trump Presidency Carnival, where every day gives us a new reason for outrage and derision. Like the reality TV star that he was and still is, Trump, through tweets and in other ways, gives both his fans and his haters new things to talk about each day. And we, like teenage fans, eagerly devour these new bits as though they mattered.

True, Trump has not matured as President. He remains the same irritable, narcissistic self-promoter with a short attention span and no interest in matters of substance. He is all talk and, so far at least, very little action, no doubt due in part to his merciful incompetence . Instead of making America great again, as he promised, he extends his legendary twitter feuds with Rosie ODonnell to leaders of foreign countries.

But we have not matured either. We continue to go along with Trumps strategy of prioritizing his persona over the substance of his politics. We are so willing to ridicule him for the typos in his tweets that we forget to deal with their substanceand, more importantly, to develop strategies against his policies. Trump does not care about substance, and so we dont either. Trump sees the world in black and white, and we happily go along. We make fun of his short attention span, but ours is hardly better. (Do you remember how Trump asked his staff to develop a plan to defeat ISIS within 30 days , almost two months ago? He hoped you would not.)

Of course it is worth pointing out that Trump continues to treat the world of politics as a big soap opera. In this soap opera, friendship and loyalty are more important than the norms and needs of society. Feelings matter more than facts. People are assessed not by what they do but what their characteristics are - Obama is a bad (or sick) guy , North Korea is behaving very badly , and so on. Personal fulfillment trumps the public interest. Slapstick humor and simplistic exchanges substitute for a broader and more complex view of the world.

But we should also acknowledge that he can do this because we are so willing to buy into his soap opera. We question why Ivanka Trump plays such a prominent role, and at the same time we happily retweet Chelsea Clinton and Meryl Streep. We decry the fake news on the right, and at the same time repost highly questionable things just because they sound right. We point out how inappropriate it is for the President to treat foreign politicians like he treats Rosie ODonnell. But when we fear that those politicians will be personally upset and offended, it shows that we ourselves are not able to draw the difference either. We have adopted Trumps infantilizing view of politics. We are complicit in his Rosie-ODonnelisation of America.

With regard to the Merkel/Trump press conference, Politicos White House correspondent remarked that [t]he German press shamed us. (Yes, on twitter.) She referred to US journalists who are either unwilling or, through the weird norms of such press conferences, unable, to ask really tough questions. But she could have referred to all of us. We all tend to forget the things that matter and instead focus on the things of the moment. Willingly or not, we have been captured by Trumps strategy. In this, at least, his presidency has been extremely successful.

So yes, by all means, share that hilarious meme with Merkel scolding Trump for hiring Nazis. I laughed, too. But after that, please remember to come back to where the real action lies. We are all needed there.