The Soul-Sucking, Attention-Eating Black Hole of the Trump Presidency

[Commentary] In short, President Donald Trump is very likely a short-timer whose moment on our national stage — even if it lasts four years — will not have warranted the degree to which it has shifted our attention from the important long-term issues that do not go away simply because we stop paying attention to them or, as in the case of climate change or Russian wrongdoing, our president continues to pretend they don’t exist. President Trump will not inadvertently or otherwise damage the fundamentals of what makes America great. Indeed, recent events have restored hope that perhaps his story may one day be seen as proof that the American system works and that bad actors are ultimately brought down.

But we need to tear our eyes away from the spectacle of this clusterf--k of a presidency and its daily dramas and periodically look up and out to our horizons, recognizing that the narcissism aside, there remains real greatness in America that needs tending, planning, and nurturing in the context of the real world — even if, at the moment, there is very little evidence of that greatness at the center of our government.