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Unless you are living under a rock, which increasingly doesn’t seem like such a bad idea nowadays, you no doubt saw that the President of the United States tweeted a video created by a known racist on the social network Reddit, which shows Trump grabbing, throwing, mounting, and pouncing on a body with the logo of CNN imposed on the head of that body.

Beyond simply being a trashy thing for the President of the United States to put out into the world, many, including CNN itself, saw Trump’s horrendous video as a dangerous incitement of violence against journalists.

We live in the age where reasonable voices are wondering out loud whether or not it is even safe to have this President on Twitter as he demeans, targets, and harasses women, opponents, businesses, and entire industries.

We live in the age where dozens of members of Trump’s own party were forced to humbly ask their 71-year old President to grow up and stop attacking MSNBC’s Mika Brezezinksi with crude, sexist attacks online – only for Trump to respond that his attacks may not be presidential, but that they are “modern day presidential.” What the hell does that even mean?

And so, here we are, like dogs chasing our tails, spending enormous amounts of time, energy, and media coverage dissecting and blasting Trump’s tweets, with absolutely no chance whatsoever that he actually slows down or changes his ways.

And I must admit, I’m double-minded about it all. What the President of the United States says matters – doubly so when they have the audience that Trump does on Twitter and Facebook. Politicians and pundits should be blasting the horrendously offensive and dangerous statements made by the President of the United States, but here’s the rub…

We only have 24 hours in a single day. We are finite beings. And while Trump’s dangerous tweets absolutely deserve attention, every single time we divert nearly all of our energy to his tweets is time that we are not spending on other far more essential topics.

Donald Trump and America’s conservatives are proposing a healthcare bill that will raise premiums for the poor and America’s seniors while knocking 22 million more people off of their plans. Hear my heart – as a journalist I’m absolutely bothered by Trump’s online attacks against the media, but we must find ways to not allow his tweets to distract us from the very real healthcare battle we should be fighting around the clock.

Key parts of Donald Trump’s Muslim ban are currently in effect. Families are being torn apart and the Trump administration has declared that grandparents and in-laws will not receive any exceptions with the order.

Everyday people who’ve called this country home for decades are being deported by the Trump administration – including military families and men and women who were legally adopted here. This is an abomination. Each and every one of those cases should be widely known by each of us.

Horrendous military strikes from the United States continue to slaughter scores of innocent civilians – including the elderly, women, children, and even babies. We’re talking about hundreds of innocent people here and these attacks are being done with our tax dollars and in our name.

It’s July and Donald Trump hasn’t even nominated candidates for hundreds and hundreds of key positions in his government. It’s crossed the point where it doesn’t even appear that he plans on filling most of these positions. I’ve grown to think that a part of his strategy is to destroy the government from the inside out by simply leaving hundreds of vital positions vacant in perpetuity.

The ethics watchdog of the DOJ just resigned – stating that she could not, in good conscience, attempt to hold others to a standard that the White House itself is not committed to. This should be huge news. It’s a disgrace, but it’s hard for anything to make the news in light of Trump’s tweets.

Cameras are being banned from White House press briefings without anything remotely resembling a legitimate rationale for such a ban.

Police brutality in this country is happening on a record pace, but most of us would struggle to name more than one of the 604 people killed by police so far in 2017.

We have problems – very real problems – in this country – and each of them requires a sophisticated level of focus and organization that is simply not possible as long as we’re thrown off of our game every single time Trump writes a ridiculous tweet.

From this moment forward, I won’t be responding to Trump’s tweets – no matter how outrageous they may be. Enough people are already doing that. I’m going to pick the problems I aim to help solve and go about the business of solving them. Real people who need our help simply can’t afford for any of us to be distracted by Trump’s tweets any longer. I’m done.

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Weapons Of Mass Distraction: Trump Tweets Are Not The Real Issue  was originally published on blackamericaweb.com