Office Hours: How to prevent Trump Indictment Fatigue Syndrome?

Friends,

As I began writing today’s letter to you, I was overcome with a kind of dread. I didn’t want to write once again about Trump. I didn’t want to utter his name. I desperately wanted to forget him, put him firmly out of my mind. My mind was reeling from the coverage — the indictments, the legal and political maneuvers, Trump’s nonstop rants, his unremitting squalor.

What is happening now plays into what’s been one of Trump’s key tactics over the past eight years — generating so much chaos in so many places that the totality becomes overwhelming. Confusion. Fog. Exhaustion. Overload. The media circus. Trump’s constant, convulsive, over-the-top, baseless charges — added to the lies of his enablers and lackeys in Congress — and the responses and counter-responses, make it hard to comprehend what’s actually happening.

What worries me in particular is that it’s all just starting. All four cases — two federal (concerning Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election and his theft of secret documents), and two state (falsifying business records in New York and seeking to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia) — will presumably go to trial within the next eight months, in the midst of the primaries, and continue into the general election.

America could become buried in judicial process, legal maneuver, political fights, pugilistic ploys, revolting personalities, and unremitting “both sides” coverage.

The worst consequence of Trump Indictment Fatigue Syndrome would be for the nation to lose sight of the unprecedented, sickening reality that the man who had been president of the United States lied without basis that he had won reelection, then attempted to overturn his loss illegally and violently, and continues to spout the same lie along with an additional baseless lie that his opponent is orchestrating his prosecution, as he runs once again for reelection. And he has convinced a majority of Republican voters that he is telling the truth and has corrupted most Republican legislators into going along.

This direct attack on American democracy threatens the very foundations of the nation. If it is not reversed — if Trump is not held criminally accountable or if he is reelected president — our democracy ceases to exist. It is that simple, that odious, that reprehensible.

So today’s Office Hours question: How do we avoid Trump Indictment Fatigue Syndrome? How does the portion of America that is still rational remain focused on the squalid central reality of what has occurred — and continues?

Please let us have your thoughts.