too many Daves

I ran seven angry miles today, propelled by the same disgust that fueled my previous post. It’s not quite right to say that all seven of the miles were angry. After some uncounted number of strides and some smaller uncounted number of times forcing myself to really hear the “Get that dirt off your shoulder” of the Jay-Z song I’d set on repeat, I realized something that started to calm me.

What I realized is that D_n_ld Tr_mp is never going to matter. Not if he formally declares his candidacy. Not if he polls well. Not if he wins a primary. Not if he wins the White House.

D_n_ld Tr_mp can’t matter because he is nothing but an Internet troll. Yes, he’s got pricey suits and a helicopter with his name in giant letters and that dipshit hairdo. But, down at the empty heart of him, he’s just the jerk who elbows into a comments section to jab at strangers’ scabs.

What I realized after today’s 100th or 261st “Get that dirt off your shoulder” is that the Internet already has an adage for how to deal with the D_n_ld Tr_mps: Don’t feed the trolls.

Our outrage is D_n_ld Tr_mp’s oxygen. As a nakedly opportunistic convert to the GOP platform, his only conceivable gambit is to show the angry base that his troll tactics infuriate the right people. Even if you recognize this as a ripe tactical opportunity to ratchet up our outrage and blog  D_n_ld Tr_mp’s name with all the vowels intact and oxygenate his candidacy and trick extremists into nominating a buffoon to run against Obama, I hope you will think bigger.

For bloggers or citizen journalists or time-wasting professionals like Jake Tapper, a good first step toward thinking bigger would be to read this short bit from David Foster Wallace’s unfinished final novel, The Pale King:

The real reason why US citizens were/are not aware of these conflicts, changes, and stakes is that the whole subject of tax policy and administration is dull. Massively, spectacularly dull.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of this feature. Consider, from the (Internal Revenue) Service’s perspective, the advantages of the dull, the arcane, the mind-numbingly complex. The IRS was one of the very first government agencies to learn that such qualities help insulate them against public protest and political opposition, and that abstruse dullness is actually a much more effective shield than is secrecy. For the great disadvantage of secrecy is that it’s interesting. People are drawn to secrets; they can’t help it.

Instead of chomping the fishhook of whatever outrageous D_n_ld Tr_mp headlines come tomorrow or next week or three months from now, I’m going to make myself seek out “the dull, the arcane, the mind-numbingly complex” that Wallace wrote about. I just put “Multiple U.S. Agencies Provided Billions of Dollars to Train and Equip Foreign Police Forces” on my Instapaper. The  Government Accountability  Office even did a podcast about the report. It’s billed as an “interview by GAO staff with Joseph Christoff, Director, International Affairs and Trade.”

Don’t even try to pretend you’re not tempted.