Sometimes the trivial matters elicit the most public outrage

by Publicola, Thursday, July 16, 2026, 11:13 (8 days ago) @ Joe I

It's a weird phenomenon. It's like NYC under Bloomberg when people were more outraged by his ban on jumbo sized sodas than stop-and-frisk and other more pernicious shit.

Everything is so baked-in with Trump that I simply don't know what would move the needle for people. But the reflecting pool debacle presents everything wrong with Trump's second term in a way that's accessible to even inattentive citizens. It's got the obvious corruption of the contract, the shoddy work (which, among other things, illustrates the importance of a competitive bid process), malicious prosecutions, the casual and obvious lying by the president and spokespersons, etc. Its triviality is the thing that has the potential to open some eyes: that the administration is reacting the way it is with something so low stakes maybe is more revealing for the average citizen.

I figured something like the tariffs or rising prices as a result of a pointless war with Iran would move the needle -- most citizens actually feel the effects of those policies in a way that should sour them on the president. Maybe we need a trivial scandal to get people to wake up. I don't think this is it, but if summarily executing immigrants and protestors and stuff like that doesn't inspire public outrage commensurate with the seriousness of those actions, maybe the most we can hope for is overreaction to a relatively pointless scandal.