Personal essays
Which battles to pay attention to
The game
As I’ve probably told you before, I’m not a very good Go player.
I can’t remember if I lost to a five year old or if I wasn’t good enough to even play him.
In the early days of learning the game you focus on how to capture stones and how to keep your stones from being captured.
These are the battles you engage with as you play.
But there’s the bigger game. There’s what’s happening on the entire board.
You have to see the entire board and decide which battles to engage in and which to ignore.
And that brings me, of course, to the US Election.
What are the battles you should engage in?
Which ones should you ignore?
See the whole board.
The battles to ignore
The New York Times is just awful.
This past weekend they reported, “Mr. Trump opened his speech at the airport in Latrobe, Pa, with 12 minutes of reminiscing about the golfer Arnold Palmer”.
Reminiscing? Trump talked about other golfers noticing the size of Palmer’s genitals in the locker room and being impressed.
Reminiscing is when you tell a story about Palmer winning this tournament or designing that course - it’s not making comments like that.
If the Times is going to cover the story then they should do it accurately. But the rest of us should stay focused.
Trump’s comments about Palmer’s penis shouldn’t go unnoticed. We should put it in the box with “grab her by the …”. It should remind us that this isn’t the characcter of a person we want representing us.
But it also shouldn’t distract us.
This weekend news outlets were talking about the Palmer comment and Trump referring to Harris as a “shit vice president” and no mention was made of Trump’s racism, sexism, or facism.
Oh and his lack of competence and energy.
Every time I start to say, “If Biden, …”, I stop and take a breath. It didn’t work when it was “If Obama, …” and in fact, “If Hillary,” was such a thing we didn’t even say it - we said “But her emails.”
Anyway.
The distractions are battles that we should notice but not put effort placing our own stones to address. If the media does its job and covers these things - that should be enough.
And if it’s not enough, I’ve got questions.
The battles to engage in
So how is Palmer’s penis different than “they’re eating our dogs.”
At first it isn’t.
At first it’s just something we notice just like the Palmer story.
But then we notice it gaining interest. Stones are being placed by others that support the other side and capture territory.
We have to respond.
Innocent immigrants are being targeted and harmed.
Their innocent neighbors are being targeted and harmed.
It could be a Palmer story unless we place our stones in such a way as to capture important territory ourselves. We need to make the “eating dogs like” a small part of the story and move the focus to the proper treatment of immigrants and the people who are here legally and generally help us build better communities.
We can’t chase out the lies - but this was a battle worth engaging with on our own terms.
The Harris campaign seems to be better at this than past campaigns.
Democrats in the past chased every story and let the opponent determine which battles would be fought.
There’s two weeks left - let’s see the board.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 239. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe