Of all the ill effects on the brain attributed to social media, here’s a new one that researchers have uncovered: The steady stream of short videos is not only shrinking attention spans. It’s also making heavy social media consumers less able to plan for the future, or really even care much about it.
This malady of short-sightedness, though, is not just a manifestation of technology. Politics has that same harmful effect.
Witness the 11th-hour scrambling of Donald Trump to salvage the upcoming midterm elections by trying to address his No. 1 vulnerability: high prices at the gas pump and elsewhere.
The Republican president is issuing executive orders and collaborating with a foreign enemy in an effort to bring down the price of diesel. The cost of the fuel has jumped 80 percent since the first of the year, largely because of the unpopular war Trump launched on Iran.
He is temporarily permitting American truckers to run on dyed diesel, which is normally reserved for farm equipment and other off-road purposes, and deferring until 2027 the federal taxes they would owe on that fuel.
He also has announced an even more controversial deal to temporarily lift the longstanding U.S. sanctions on fuel exports from Russia in return for Vladimir Putin’s assurance — whatever that’s worth — to inject millions of tons of diesel fuel into the global supply chain over the course of the next several months.
Neither of these measures is expected to move the needle much on fuel prices. The fuel tax deferment is worth about 25 cents a gallon — less than a 5% reduction on the current cost of diesel. Also, it’s doubtful Russia, mired in a war of its own making with Ukraine, will be able to hit the targets in the export agreement Trump announced. Ukrainian airstrikes have significantly reduced Russia’s refinery capacity, so much so that Russia has curtailed exports in order to hold on to the fuel for its own uses.
However much diesel Russia is able to export to the U.S. and elsewhere, though, will accomplish one thing: It will provide Vladimir Putin with desperately needed revenue to continue his predatory ambition to conquer Ukraine. Trump, in this latest foreign policy vacillation, seems willing to sacrifice the Ukrainian people and encourage further Russian aggression against other former Soviet bloc countries if it will save the Republicans from losing their majorities in Congress in November.
Energy policy is not the only arena in which Trump is putting personal political expediency ahead of the nation’s long-term interests. This month, he directed Medicare to send $90 refunds to almost 21 million beneficiaries. Medicare is six years from insolvency, but the president has failed during his two terms in office to address that problem with any seriousness. Instead, he has chosen to extract $2 billion from the government insurance program’s dwindling reserves in hopes that the pre-election payoff will be enough to make seniors less angry about the high costs of their healthcare.
The president is not the only politician nor are Republicans the only party that becomes increasingly myopic as elections approach. Politicians from both major parties have been supporting proposals to reduce or suspend fuel taxes, even if that means slowing down much-needed road and bridge construction and repairs.
For most politicians, their view of the future goes not much farther than the next election. The electorate isn’t much better. The U.S. government is $40 trillion in debt because voters are more worried about maintaining their benefits than they are how their grandchildren may have to pay for them.
