In August, Melania Trump was lambasted, mostly over social media, for wearing high heels while boarding Air Force One with her husband. The two were on the way to Houston in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, and the attacks implied that neither the First Lady nor the President intended to provide a great deal of help. Setting aside the practical inaccuracy (she was wearing sneakers on the ground) and the veiled sexism reminiscent of not-so-distant or dissimilar criticisms of Michelle Obama, prematurely jumping to superfluous criticism is an emotional trap both sides of the aisle routinely indulge in. And although enticing, this habit is a divisive itch that we can’t afford to scratch anymore.
In an age where so many things of substance are legitimately concerning, wallowing in hyperbole over insignificant topics deteriorates the credibility of an otherwise strong position and distracts from important issues. In an age where the President of the United States calls for broadcasting licenses of news organizations that criticize him to be revoked, routinely projects contempt for the First Amendment, and publicly daydreams about undermining the judicial system and Department of Justice with political prosecutions of former campaign opponents, we are in need of credible, reasonable voices. In an age where racial and religious minorities are sacrificed on the political altar of energizing and appeasing white nationalists worth one vote a piece, we are in need of credible, reasonable voices. In an age where the attitude and commitment of Federal disaster relief seems dependent on the political importance of the region and the political persuasion and skin tone of the populace, we are in need of credible, reasonable voices. In an age where the deportation of children who have never known anything but the United States is being used as a bargaining chip for a wasteful, unsustainable border wall, we need credible, reasonable voices. And no one can build a reputation for credibility and reason on furious criticism of Melania Trump’s high heels or, more recently, whether or not the President overfed a fish.
Democrats and Republicans alike are guilty, and examples of selling nonsense as substance abound in both parties. In 2009, Sean Hannity sarcastically criticized President Obama, casting him as an elitist—a calculated theme for Hannity and conservative news personalities—because he ordered a hamburger with Dijon mustard. Michelle Obama endured a parade of insults for eight years over insubstantial nonsense, such as Rush Limbaugh, Keith Ablow, Andrew Breitbart and other conservative pundits who seemed to think the then-First Lady wasn’t skinny enough to advocate for nutrition in schools. The concept of a woman in a different political party caring about, of all abhorrent things, nutritious school lunches was so offensive that some conservatives felt the need to attack her weight.
Meanwhile, liberals gleefully spent months and years mocking Mitt Romney for saying he had a “binder full of women,” casting his statement as demeaning and insensitive toward women. Never mind that Romney, in context, was describing an actual, physical binder compiled with the help of women advocacy groups in a concerted effort to ensure women were well represented in his gubernatorial Cabinet and senior staff. Romney’s efforts in the way of gender diversity should have been welcomed, certainly by a feminist-minded Democratic party. Instead he was ridiculed and criticized for what was an admirable position regardless of party. And it’s not as if everyone didn’t know what he meant. The drive to criticize eclipsed both truth and perspective.
In each of these examples, the criticism had much less to do with what was being said or done than who was doing or saying it. The criticism of the thing itself was mostly an afterthought to the partisan impulse to simply be contrary and indignant. What experiences like this expose is a partisan, spiteful habit of finding fault in nothing or misamplifying, even reversing, meaningless tidbits for political gain. And the gratuitous criticism of Melania Trump’s shoes, Barack Obama’s hamburgers, Michelle Obama’s supposed weight, the President’s fish-feeding, and Mitt Romney’s awkward, though unavoidably accurate, sentence are just token examples of a destructive, kneejerk reaction all too common across party lines.
Besides the crushing, collective emotional weight of being indignant about every insignificant thing, the impulse to ceaselessly criticize has real negative consequences. In short, when everything matters, nothing matters. When even the most inconsequential things draw equal coverage and outrage as things that really matter, it becomes very difficult for the public to gauge accurately where to invest attention. In the Tweetstorm that is the presidency of Donald Trump, it’s already difficult enough to stay focused on what matters most without wasting time and energy upset because the First Lady boarded a plane in high heels.
Beyond that, being acrimonious over events of no real consequence undermines credibility. Sean Hannity, for me, does not carry a great deal of persuasive weight, because I know he would find any reason, to the degree of a preference for Dijon mustard, to snidely criticize a political opponent. He is permanently crying wolf, because he would have us believe in a world where nearly everything done by a left-leaning politician is somehow indicative of poor moral character, even dressing a hamburger. That world is a fabrication. It is the product of a mind that will find any paltry reason, however tenuous or silly, to believe what it wants to believe. Likewise, criticizing Melania Trump for high heels is crying wolf, and fuels the fire Trump lit—that he is a victim who is constantly treated “very unfairly.” The administration’s response to any sound, meaningful criticism is practically teed up—that liberals will mindlessly castigate anything with Trump’s mark on it—despite the fact that he indulges in this type of nonsensical, diversionary criticism as much, or significantly more, than anyone.
Again, when everything matters, nothing matters. And when the real wolves come, like the President describing a black athlete protesting police brutality as a “son of a bitch” and a mob of self-identified white supremacists marching with torches and chanting “Jews won’t replace us” as ”some very fine people,” no one will care to listen closely to the uncomfortable, complicated, but important debate. It will be so much easier to break it down to the simplest, but most polarizing and misleading, explanations. When troubling events occur, like the President appearing to take the word of a Russian strongman over every single one of our own intelligence agencies, they’ll be too distracted arguing about the President’s Koi fish husbandry. Instead of delving through the very real, complicated consequences of a massive tax proposal, our attention will be spent on silly, but simple, nonsense like Melania’s shoes, or Obama’s hamburger, or Romney’s binder, and so on. And in a world where the President of the Unites States routinely tries to alter the perception of truth by unabashedly broadcasting falsehoods, credibility and a sense of proportion are precious things to waste on trifles.