My guess is that everyone who pays any attention to politics in the United States today is, by necessity, suffering from what I would call Externally Disseminated Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or EDADHD. The main symptom of EDADHD is the inability to concentrate on any problem in the country today without having one’s mind diverted to a different but equally important and troubling problem within about 60 seconds. The effects are both the inability to think anything through, and the inability to prioritize. It is, it appears, a condition with a definite cause, spread by clearly enabling forces, but as of yet with no cure.

The cause is one individual, the contagion is increased by one political party, and a cure may take another four or so years. This does not bode well.

I thought about this today (for about 60 seconds) when I looked at the first page of the print New York Times, and saw the article about the Guantanamo Naval Base. This leased property, near the eastern end of the Island of Cuba, has been used, with much controversy, to house “terrorists”, apprehended overseas and unwanted even to put in prison in the continental United States, and that number is now fairly minimal. Proposals to close Guantanamo have been floating around for years. But Trump proposed to reverse course completely, of course, and prepare Guantanamo to house up to 30,000 “illegals” either permanently or as they are on their way elsewhere. This got enormous attention in the press, the first small group of individuals were shipped there, and then they were shipped elsewhere, and the thought of using Guantanamo for mass incarceration has not been talked much about since.

I thought about yesterday when, out of the blue, Trump decided that Alcatraz, a former federal prison located on an island in San Francisco Bay and closed 62 years ago primarily because of the cost of keeping it open. Trump said he wanted to open it again, so one of his top enablers Pam Bondi had to say that it would be cost efficient to open it this time, and now it is drawing attention from everything else for its 60 seconds of fame.

Also yesterday, Trump decided (out of the same blue) that the United States should put a 100% tariff on foreign films, and for about 60 seconds everyone forgot about both Guantanamo and Alcatraz and tried to figure out what that meant and how that would even work.

A day or so before that, 60 seconds of attention was focused on how many dolls a typical American child could expect for Christmas, and what they would cost, assuming that the dolls were made in China (almost all are) and the tariffs would be at 145%, or 125%, or 25%, or 10%, or if there would be exceptions from all tariffs for dolls. Any of these scenarios are apparently equally likely.

And before that there was the attention on Abrego Garcia’s finger tattoos. His fingers do have tattoos, each of which is a symbol of some sort, which – say the experts – have no connection with MS-13 imagery. But someone photo shopped his hands to place M S 1 3 above the actual tattoos on his hands, and Trump has decided those the photo shopped images are authentic, and attention was placed on these fake tattoos for 60 seconds.

And finally, we can’t overlook the the image of Pope Donald the I and Only. And the 50 or so other political sound bites we have been faced with recently.

Now, all of these things attracted our full attention for very brief periods of time. And guess what? None of these things are really that important in the overall scheme of things. But this is the beauty of Donald Trump. He can attract our attention through a rapid onslaught of outrageous nonsense, while Rome burns. And we can’t tell the difference between thinking about Alcatraz and losing Social Security. Or better, we can’t really focus on the potential of losing Social Security because, hey, did you hear we may reopen Alcatraz?

I listened to a podcast with David Brooks yesterday. The host was a fellow named Scott Galloway, whom you may know, but I don’t. It was an interesting 45 minutes (Rockville to my house), but I wish I was part of the conversation because Brooks says so many things that almost right, but not quite. His heart seems to be in the right place, but his logic just doesn’t get him to where he needs to go.

The premise seemed to be about the unfortunate disappearance of civility and tolerance, the need to accept a variety of views, the need to provide education that really educates, and the need to allow for social mobility. All of that is absolutely correct. But guess what? As they discussed the evidence of this, and gave their thoughts of what could be done about it, they couldn’t keep to one topic long enough to do anything but gloss over it, which meant that they couldn’t see the inconsistencies in much of what they were saying. Why? Because they too suffer from EDADHD, of course.

Now, if I weren’t suffering from the same disease, I would sit down at my desk, listen to this podcast once again, but slowly with a lot of stops and write down my comments as I went along. Then I would read over what I wrote and see if it made sense and, to the extent it did, I would write up a meaningful blog post that might get us all thinking about more deeply.

But, I have other podcasts to hear, articles to read, newscasts to listen to, newspapers to scan, books and magazines to read, and – oh, yes – even a life to live. In the meantime, I have to keep my ears open to make sure that I don’t miss any of the five or six sound bites Donald will throw at us today.

EDADHD is, I am afraid, the bane of our existence.