Self-Regulation in the Era of Political Chaos

Is every single Trump-related news event really a level eleven crisis?

This past week was one of the most relentless, in terms of legal and political developments, that we have seen in a long time. 

A ruling in Trump’s Fulton County, Georgia case allowed Fani Willis to remain as the D.A. after weeks of a wild goose chase that was designed to distract from Trump’s crimes and undermine a Black woman prosecutor.

The Mar-a-Lago stolen documents case, overseen by idealogue Trump appointee Judge Aileen Cannon, had hearings to determine whether certain counts would be dismissed on meritless legal grounds asserted by Trump and his co-defendants.

Trump’s bond in the E. Jean Carroll case was accepted by Judge Kaplan in the Southern District of New York, meaning that case is now on appeal, but E. Jean will eventually get her money.

And yesterday, after a strange set of developments involving the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York failing to turn over a large tranche of documents, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s election interference trial against Trump was delayed by twenty days.

Of course, all of this is happening against the backdrop of the 2024 Presidential Election, with grave international crises happening around the world in which the U.S. is playing a role.

It’s a lot, all at once. That is, of course, one of the things the far right is counting on: that overwhelm will prevent us from continuing to mobilize to elect Democrats and progressives up and down the ticket.

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In this regard, I’ve been spotting a disturbing trend in left-leaning commentary recently– one worth discussing in the context of political burnout. 

It’s the idea that every breaking news event carries equal weight, and that each one is a CODE RED CRISIS.

Very rarely do I see people on our side of the fence saying “you don’t actually need to worry about this.” And that’s troubling.

Let’s just take, for example, the twenty day delay in Alvin Bragg’s election interference trial in New York City. 

I tried cases as a trial lawyer in New York City and around the country for fifteen years. I can’t remember any trial I litigated that didn’t have the trial date moved at least once– in some instances for just a few days, but in others for as long as a year.

Twenty days of delay, let alone in a case of this gravity, is NOT a big deal. And even if Judge Juan Merchan grants a little more than that, we’re still looking at a potential conviction of Donald Trump in that case before the Republican National Convention in July.

And yet yesterday, I saw a host of left-leaning political commentators– and by extension, thousands of their followers– absolutely losing it over what amounts to a truly tiny bump in the road on the way to Donald Trump’s eventual conviction and incarceration— Chicken Little, hair on fire kind of responses to something that is fundamentally, in the big picture, a non-event.

When I tried to engage in that discourse to temper the outrage and panic with actual facts, I was met with pushback by those who seem to WANT to cling to outrage like a security blanket.

This is a dangerous, addictive cycle. It smacks of hypervigilance as a trauma response, and it is emotionally disabling in an era where we need more action and less unnecessary provocation.

We need to be focused right now on mobilizing in our own communities for the 2024 election. We need to recognize that this is not just about motivating people to vote against Trump, but also about engaging disaffected and disinterested voters with a vision for the future that inspires and provides hope.

It’s really hard to engage positive vision and hope from a place of fight or flight, panic, and outrage. And those things are also inevitable predictors of political burnout, cynicism, hopelessness and mass political fatigue, all of which could cost us democracy.

Trump and his ilk are counting on it.

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So how do we combat this cycle of provoked outrage and news-cycle panic? Here’s how.

The question we all should be asking, with every breaking news graphic and every exclamatory push notification, is this: DO I REALLY NEED TO BE UPSET ABOUT THIS? IS THIS REALLY A CRISIS?

Because if it’s not, we will save ourselves unnecessary and unwanted stress and outrage, and be able to move on to continuing to do the good work.

Just simply asking those questions, and taking a moment to carefully consider your response, will take your own emotional reaction down a few notches. It will also give you a chance to decide how you want to engage, or even if you do, with what commentators or news sources tell you is allegedly outrageous.

And if you don’t know whether or not the latest breaking news development is something to be upset about, or something constituting a panic-level crisis, you can always find out by watching my daily Youtube broadcast, ResistanceLive, and saving yourself some angst. My favorite audience members often remark that part of what I do there is “talking folks off the ledge” on the daily.

To be clear: none of this is meant to minimize the threat to American democracy that we are facing down this year. It’s grave, and real. 

However, the only effective way to battle back successfully against it is to modulate our own reactions to the provocation to non-stop outrage— let alone over minor issues— and to engage emotionally only with the issues that matter most.

And the biggest issue of all is this: defeating Trumpism everywhere at the ballot box in November, and saving American democracy.

When in doubt, do the work that will lead to that result. Phone bank. Text bank. Deep canvass your friends and neighbors. Door knock for candidates you care about, because the reverse coat-tails effect of that work will lead to voting for Democrats across the board.

Action is an antidote to despair, and constant outrage by definition depletes our will to act.

So, some advice for this chaotic era: Stay focused, stay calm, and carry on. We can win this.

And if Trump is convicted and imprisoned in the interim, well, that will just be the icing on the cake.

See you soon.

ECM

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