Dwain Northey (Gen X)

The American media circus is in town again, and as always, the clowns are working overtime. A shooting in Minnesota should spark conversations about the insanity of our gun laws, but no, that would be too real, too uncomfortable, too close to the bone. Instead, the headlines scream: the shooter was trans. Ah yes, of course—because identity is more important than the fact that bullets were flying in yet another public space where families should’ve been safe. Forget gun reform. Forget the endless body count. Let’s reduce a human tragedy into a culture war sideshow, complete with talking heads foaming at the mouth, because nothing distracts quite like a fight about gender. It’s red meat for the audience, and they’ll chew it right up.

And then, as if the distraction wasn’t theatrical enough, we get RFK Jr. making the rounds with his science fair word salad. He drops “mitochondria” into a speech like he’s auditioning for Jeopardy!—as though the word itself proves he’s smarter than every virologist, epidemiologist, and doctor who ever walked the Earth. His followers nod in awe, dazzled by the syllables, convinced that if you can pronounce “mitochondria,” you must be the rightful steward of their health decisions. Never mind the years of debunked nonsense trailing behind him like toilet paper stuck to a shoe. He’s figured out the trick: sound smart to people who don’t know better, and you’re suddenly a prophet. It’s not education; it’s manipulation. He’s basically the guy at the bar who says “quantum physics” three times and walks out with your wallet.

This is nothing new. Dickens would laugh himself sick at how familiar it all looks. In David Copperfield, the street urchins dance and sing, pulling focus while the real theft happens quietly in your coat pocket. Fast forward a couple hundred years, and the same act is playing on every screen in America. Only instead of scrappy kids, we’ve got cable news producers and politicians running the con, making sure your outrage is pointed anywhere except at them. While you’re yelling about bathrooms or “cancel culture,” your paycheck, your healthcare, and your democracy are being siphoned away, drip by drip.

And in the middle of it all, there’s Donald Trump, stumbling through speeches, forgetting names, mistaking countries, and clearly showing signs of decline. But God forbid anyone in the media actually call it what it is. No, they’re already rehearsing the spin. When he finally keels over, some sycophantic “doctor” will emerge from Mar-a-Lago with a press release claiming he was healthier than an Olympic decathlete, destined to live until the year 3000, and therefore his demise must have been murder most foul. Cue the conspiracy theories, cue the martyrdom, cue the endless distraction machine grinding into overdrive.

Meanwhile, the real crises—climate collapse, wealth inequality, corruption so thick you could bottle it—get buried under the noise. And that’s the whole point. We’re the dupes in the carnival, dazzled by the flashing lights while our pockets are being emptied. If Dickens were alive, he’d recognize the scam in an instant. The difference is that his marks eventually figured it out. We? We’re still staring at the shiny distraction, swearing it’s the main event.