I think about the Vietnam war, my parents telling me the TV news used to broadcast the names of those who died. On the one hand, it was the first time the nation had the capability to do something like this, "the first televised war"[1]. At the same time I can't help but wonder if that was what it took, if that was the only way to get through people's me-ness, their smallness, their insular, far apart lives, and to inject some sense of the global massive proportion of what was afoot all around them, that their state was engaged in. The media took the time to attend, to focus the nation on what was happening, with the daily namings, running on and on and on, of lives lost. The media socialized the problem by _paying attention to it,_ in direct tribute to it, to the horrible costs.<p>All these years of this administration, it has been constant relentless merciless assault on our _attention._ We talk about the attention economy? All media has been fixed on the ongoing cavalcade of schlock emitting from 1600 Pennsylvania, non stop lying[2] & affrontery right out of the gate.<p>It makes it hard to sustain any kind of caring or thoughtfulness, when there's madcap bedlam & lying deceitful insanity working hand in hand with Senate to both pass incredible executive acts & bring in all kinds of wild completely unqualified public servants. The show keeps changing, breakneck pace of whatever three delusional soul crushing things are going to happen today.<p>We passed the number of US military deaths of the Vietnam war in late April. Heavens, that is so long ago; it feels like we'd just started this long war then. By July we were up to a death count topping most modern wars excluding WWII[3]. But the slow rolling incremental nature of it, the jaw dropping antics & childishness & lying all about us... it's been hard. Real hard. I don't want to tell us to chin up, carry on, because this is dark days, dark material, truly a national disaster of the grandest scale. But with context, I understand some of why this our interests have not been as rapt & focused as they might have been.<p>[1] <a href="https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2018/01/25/vietnam-the-first-television-war/" rel="nofollow">https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2018/01/25/vietnam-the-f...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/13/president-trump-has-made-more-than-20000-false-or-misleading-claims/" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/13/president...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/30/fact-check-us-covid-19-deaths-surpass-combat-fatalities-many-wars/5535450002/" rel="nofollow">https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/30/fac...</a>