No, Chris Murphy, Not Everything is a "Distraction"
A message to the scolds who think only they know what really matters.
by Bob Cesca
WASHINGTON, DC – It happens during nearly every Donald Trump-related news cycle. There’s always a self-righteous scold on social media who will inevitably wag his fingers, insisting that whatever’s leading the news that day is a distraction from something else that he believes is more important. This distraction policing is easily ranked toward the top of my list of political discourse pet peeves, residing just above insufferable CNN roundtable discussions.
One of the more prominent distraction cops is Sen. Chris Murphy. To be clear: I generally like Murphy and I especially like that he’s a fighter in an age of inexplicable Democratic compliance and timidity. But man does he love to ‘splain to us that whatever we’re excited or concerned about is a distraction from, in this instance, the “big beautiful” budget bill.
When the fracas between Elon Musk and Donald Trump erupted last week, Murphy posted this on social media:
When 15 million Americans lose their health care and plunge into personal crisis, none of them are going to give a shit about a made-for-clicks twitter fight between two billionaires arguing about who gets the bigger share of the corruption spoils.
He’s referring to the Medicaid cuts in the budget bill, which, yes, is super important. But the split between Musk and Trump could directly impact whether the bill gets passed. Elon wants to kill it and Donald, obviously, wants to pass it.
The split between them could mean a split in Republican support for the bill: who do Republican senators appease, Elon or Donald? We still don’t know for sure, but we do know that Murphy at least pretended not to get the linkage between the two stories and could’ve used his platform to explain the politics of it all. Instead, he scolded the rest of us, and he did so during a rare occasion these days when we were actually excited about some potentially good news, not just because of the scuffle itself but because of what it’d mean for the future of the Republican Party and the MAGA movement.
A couple days later, while Donald deployed federalized National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles in a serious authoritarian crackdown, Murphy appeared on cable news and tsk-tsked us once again:
Everything that's happened in the last 7 days -- the fight with Musk and now the deployment of the National Guard -- is probably also a distraction from the main story, which is that Trump is trying to pass probably the most unpopular piece of legislation he will attempt to move through Congress.
Wrong again. All of these matters are important. And if Murphy had been more thoughtful about his response and less inclined to shame anyone who believes Donald’s military incursion in Los Angeles is a serious event requiring our attention, he’d realize that it’s all connected to the budget bill. In addition to the linkage between the Elon/Donald fight’s political relationship to the fate of the budget bill, it turns out there’s $185 billion in funding for Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the legislation.
Frankly, the only person who’s distracted is Murphy who ought to be planted on the Hill working to obstruct the Senate Republicans, preventing the bill from ever coming up for a vote, rather than appearing on yet another cable news show to tell us what to think and what to prioritize. Whether it’s this or anything else, it’s the job of our elected representatives to respond to our demands, not the other way around.
Author and podcaster Jared Yates Sexton wrote the other day:
It's hard to overstate how destructive the reflexive "this is a distraction!" stuff that politicians and commentators and people are always peddling. Everything is happening all at once. That's how authoritarianism works. If you can't navigate and synthesize this, you're not meeting the moment.
I couldn’t explain it better. Jared is exactly right: flooding the zone is part of the authoritarianism playbook, and this is the hand we were dealt. Yes, there are actual distractions out there, like some of Donald’s inconsequential weirdo blurts during his rallies, but we’re allowed to take a minute to laugh at him, too – and come to think of it, laughing at Donald and his MAGA disciples is an effective way to undermine their tinpot authority.
Nevertheless, we always return to the big issues, whether it’s the budget bill, the dismantling of government institutions, the obvious corruption, the human rights atrocities, or Donald’s latest attacks on the Constitution and democracy. There are enough of us that we can deal with everything, often with a unified voice. Ignoring one of Donald’s many trespasses against our American values and traditions because we think – or because we’re told – that it’s a distraction is helping Donald get away with it.
No one said facing down fascism would be easy or restful. It’s work, and it’s our responsibility, as Jared wrote, to meet the moment as American citizens, to defend our norms for future generations, even if it means focusing on all of it simultaneously. Our grandparents and great-grandparents managed to face down a crushing Great Depression, Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan all the same time. Likewise, we can focus our activism and social media attention on several issues at the same time. After all, if we can’t manage to figuratively walk and chew gum, knowing that democracy depends on it, what the hell are we even doing?
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Part of the issue is messaging and let's be honest Democrats really do suck at it. Big Beautiful Bill is countered with Big Beautiful Betrayal, which sucks when Big Bad Bill is right there and is more quotable and memorable. Politicians pay people to come up with these slogans and sayings and thats what the Democrats came up with? I'd want my money back and would fire the PR firm.
Exactly. It is beyond disingenuity to suggest that actions striking at the heart of our long-established political and social structures could ever be mere distractions, especially when those actions lay at the heart of the regime's authoritarian push. The illegal military deployments - and there will be more of them - are the current manifestation of the active systemic threat, while the budget bill is the funding mechanism, a few steps short of implementation. Both are important threats, but we need to prioritize (triage) the threats and deal with the most immediate and grave breaches of our Constitution and laws with the more intense response while simultaneously building resistance to the rest of them. Rep. Murphy should continue to stir opposition in Congress to the abominably budget bill, but should not be discounting the need to respond with strength to the military deployments and other indicia of fascism.
In Russia, the "rule" is "For my friends, anything; for my opponents, the law." After the recent tsunami of pardons, that "rule" is now being followed here. The regime's refusal to even pretend that it is following the Constitution or federal statutes reflects this breakdown of core rule of law principles. For that, you can draw a line directly to the reckless and unfounded SCOTUS grant of purportedly "qualified" immunity to djt - a grant about which he will recognize no boundary in practice.
In WWII, we fought intense wars on opposite sides of the earth for years and prevailed. We can focus on planning and implementing several critical tasks simultaneously. Let's not diminish our strength by false calls claiming that we need to concentrate our "fire" by allowing substantial incursions elsewhere to go unchallenged. It only opens us to the risk of being outflanked.
The Founders pledged "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor" to their great undertaking. It required many years, many resources, and many casualties. The protection of our democratically-elected republic deserves no less of a commitment and effort from us.
This attack from the authoritarian oligarchy has been building and preparing for 50 years - all the while, I am ashamed to say, my generation slept and distracted ourselves with consumerist concerns and increasingly trivial entertainments. It will not be defeated overnight, but it will prevail unless we finish waking up from our "bread and circuses" somnolence and respond both strategically and tactically with strength and perseverance. The new generation leaders are available, but we as a movement need to break through the largely ossified old guard paralyzed by their apparently immutable dedication to a political rules environment that hasn't existed since the early 1990s - not only to preserve the essence of our governmental structure but also to modify our policies and programs to meet the pressing needs and respect the dignity of all of us. Buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
Resist. React. Repeat.