The Hollow Man

I’ll say this for Donald Trump - he’s really good at what he does.

And I’ll say this for a lot of the reporters and commentators who have been covering him - they, too, are really good at what they do. Which may explain just why our country is so divided and conflicted about what should be simple, obvious facts.

What Trump does is rile up his base - about 30 percent of the country - and what the press does is focus, with laser-like intensity, on one single point and manage to miss the big picture entirely. It’s the best example of missing the forest for the trees that I’ve ever seen.

You disagree? Well, let’s see if we can chat about it without missing the big picture. But first, a disclaimer of sorts.

The media has a problem or two, First, their job is impossible. Second, their audience runs from people who dropped out of high school to PhD’s, and from people who last thought about the appropriate roll of government three or four decades ago to all-out political junkies. No one size fits all stories here, and most of the audience will not be satisfied. Third, there will never be enough room or time to do the story properly, and never enough time to report and write it.

Other than that, no problems. Except maybe secrecy on the part of the people being covered, lying by the people being covered, lack of knowledge on the part of the people being covered and some people trying to explain, in a few words, what it took them 20 or 30 years to learn.

Ever try interviewing an economist about how much widening a road will cost and how you measure the payback from the project?

So, with all that in mind, let’s look at Trump’s first Oval Office address to the nation. You all heard it - or at least saw some clips, over and over again - so, let me ask a question: what did he say?

The wall? The government shut down? How terrible the Democrats are? All of the above?

                                                      Did You Guess?

Well, not many of my liberal friends and not many of my conservative friends (ok - there are fewer of those) will have noticed the obvious, but Trump almost never used proper nouns. Remember those? A noun is the name of a person, a place or a thing. Instead, he spoke almost exclusively in pronouns - lots of people, a lot of drugs, criminals and people arrested. Or not quite arrested. Stopped, or turned away, or sent back to come again.

How many people and from where and in what places was never mentioned. And, it was never asked. Instead we get lots of interviews with Republicans talking about how they are all holding together, and how important security is. And lots of interviews with Democrats talking about the Trump shut down and how the Republicans are defecting.

Did anyone ask what happened to the people who were stopped because they were on some sort of suspected terrorist list? Nope. Any question about what good such a list is if no one it arrested? If they were, where are they? In what court? If they weren’t, do we have a terrorist catch-and-release program? Nope again.

No numbers, of course. And the media is so sharply focused on asking the worst questions and never asking a follow-up. You say lots of people with government jobs are supporting you, Mr. President? How do you know? Do you have a list of e-mails we can check, are there people working for you who told that to you? Who? When? Maybe even where, what and why?

Would you spend a dollar to stop the shut down, madame speaker? Well, how much more? How about asking how that would work, and what it would mean. Would it stop at $5 billion? What guarantees do you have?

                                           Here's My Favorite Question

Here’s the best one. Sen. McConnell, you say you won’t allow a vote on any bill the president won’t sign. Does that go for every bill, or just this one?  What is the sense of having all those expensive and time-consuming Senate committees when the President could just write those bills for you?

Or for the conservative media folks, how about asking how many terrorists have been coming over the boarder each year? Where are they? How do we know if they were not in custody? Is there a federal budget line for running jails and feeding prisoners that you could point out, Mr. President? Please,  sir? It would help them in supporting the President if only they could show people just how big a need there is for his wall.

So our computers and our tv screens and, yes, even our blogs will probably keep focusing on what Mitch McConnell will be doing, what Nancy Pelosi will be saying and, probably, what Donald Trump Jr. may be eating if he is convicted and sent to federal prison.

And, hopefully, someone will see the big picture right under our noses,