If you don't tell the story, Trump will

How the fascists exploited the American Airlines crash — and how Democrats and the media once again let them do it

Eleven days into the new Trump presidency, here is something we’ve been noticing. After four years on, and four years off, and the dawn of another four years, every new episode is a test of whether we and our institutions have learned anything — or not.

This week, it became clear how much we have not.

It was all so familiar — the action, and the reaction, and the reaction to the reaction. And all so inadequate to the task we face.

It began, in this case, with a tragic plane crash. As is almost always the case in such episodes, there is little specific knowledge at the outset about the incident’s cause.

Traditionally, that has meant that public officials of decency wait to…learn stuff. It’s a tried-and-true method — 10/10 recommend.

But we’ve all been through enough rounds of this to know that President Trump and his acolytes will not abide by that principle.

And so, right on cue, he filled the giant gaping void left by the reality-based community’s factualness, respectfulness, and decorum by ascribing the crash to…DEI.

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen: The plane crash, according to the president, was caused by efforts to recruit talent from a wider range of backgrounds and to train people not to make others feel degraded at work and therefore underperform.

Cool theory, bro. It is as if America is being governed by a manosphere podcast.

So, already, we had the familiar cadences: the incident, the void of information and meaning, the Trumpian filling of that void, and then the Democratic Party’s and the media’s frenzy of reaction, repetition through critique, and unwitting amplification.

Before long, and less out of ill intent than out of incompetence, even well-meaning and thoughtful reality-based people were essentially having his conversation about whether the miscegenation of the races is causing airplanes to drop out of the sky.

The problem is not that Democratic Party leaders and media voices who were now responding to Trump’s hogwash were wrong. It was that that had been dragged into a conversation that was insane to be having.

In the above, Person A and Person B disagree on the effects of diversity, but they have both somehow consented to having a conversation about the causal connections between race mixing and airplane crashes, which is sort of like consenting to enter into a conversation about whether Justin Bieber caused the sinking of the Titanic.

The remedy is not to avoid reacting to Trump. He is, like, the president. The remedy, rather, is to live in more than mere reaction to him. It is to go on narrative offense.

Public-relations professionals will tell you that to own a news cycle, you need to get in front of the story. Successful political leaders know that to own public sentiment, you need to help people make meaning out of the things that shape their lives, whether everyday challenges or national crises. “To lead effectively,” Heather McGhee has told us here, “you have to really be in people’s lives in a way that helps them make meaning out of everyday life.”

Meaning doesn’t make itself, as you’ve heard us say many times. People need help connecting the dots of experience into a story. Such stories aren’t self-organizing.

What an actual opposition might have considered doing in the aftermath of the crash, even before any details were known, was simply underscoring why government matters at a time when Trump and his cronies are setting out to eviscerate it.

We don’t know what caused the crash. But the crash should be cause for reflection about the project of disemboweling the state.

The crash should cause us to remember that government matters. That staffing at agencies matters. That public goods matter. That competent leadership at the Pentagon matters, instead of hegsethian vapidity. That it’s dangerous to email millions of government workers, trying to trick them into quitting their jobs.

In short, there is much one can say in a moment like that while still being factual, still being classy, still being decorous. But refusing to be in the void-excavation business.

If we’re going to get through another four years of this — and what choice is there? — we need to get better at this. That starts by acknowledging — Democrats acknowledging and media folks acknowledging — that they are not very good at this.

But they can get better!

The first rule is not to leave the void. Don’t wait for meaning to make itself. It won’t.

The second rule: find ways of reacting that don’t end up being unconscious hyping.

When Trump attributes plane crashes to DEI, you don’t have to consent to having a conversation about DEI and plane crashes. You don’t have to do the newspaper thing of calling the statement controversial or reporting it and citing a “lack of evidence.”

Democratic leaders and media observers know enough to rise one meta layer up and describe the move being made, the job being done. Things have a history. DEI is a euphemism. Explain the move. At a minimum, call things what they are, as The Washington Post’s Karen Attiah reminds us.

The real scandal here is not Trump talking about DEI. It’s the leaving of the void. The obliviousness to getting sucked into conversations. And the hyping of the madness.

We will say it again. Meaning doesn’t make itself. If others are not making it, he will.

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Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images