The American Public has The Attention Span of a Gnat...
How Politicians Game Our Focus and use this against us to lie about progress!
There’s a strange pattern you start to notice when you live through a disaster.
First comes the adrenaline rush: the declarations of emergency, the wall-to-wall coverage, the vows that “no one will be left behind.”
But soon—sooner than you’d think—everyone moves on.
The ashes aren’t even cool before the cameras pack up.
And the politicians? They’re already on to the next shiny outrage.
Here in Southern California, thousands of families are still living in rentals or fighting insurance claims more than five years after the Woolsey and Getty Fires.
According to the California Department of Insurance:
Over 1,100 fire-related claims remain unresolved as of March 2025.
The average time to settle a claim over $500,000 is 18 months.
The median out-of-pocket cost to rebuild is $286,000, even after insurance payments.
In Malibu, just 48% of destroyed homes have been rebuilt.
In Pacific Palisades, fewer than half of the burned structures have passed final inspection.
But if you turn on the evening news, you won’t hear much about that.
Instead, you’ll hear endless hours of coverage about Donald Trump’s latest ICE raids.
The drama is irresistible: agents pounding on doors in dawn sweeps, immigrant families terrified, pundits yelling across split screens.
And meanwhile, the slow, unglamorous grind of real recovery—permits, funding gaps, the reality of trying to reconstruct a life—fades to a footnote.
The Politics of Distraction
This isn’t a fluke. It’s a deliberate political strategy: flood the zone with controversy.
You can almost picture it scribbled on a consultant’s whiteboard:
“Keep the public angry. Keep them outraged. Keep them watching.”
When you need a distraction from the fact that basic commitments—like helping your own citizens rebuild their homes—are failing, you pick a fight that guarantees airtime.
Trump did this masterfully. ICE raids were a spectacle designed to dominate headlines. Even now, long after he left office, his name can still derail every other conversation.
And state leaders have learned the same trick.
Governor Gavin Newsom—better known to some as “Governor Haircut”—has held press conferences promising swift action on wildfire recovery.
Mayor Karen Bass has delivered speech after speech about “bold plans for resilience.”
But residents see a different reality.
Julia Mendez, whose house burned in 2019, told me:
“Every time I turn on the news, I see Newsom and Bass talking about climate leadership or slamming Trump. I wish some of that energy went into actually getting my building permit approved.”
Mark Patel, who finally moved back in last year, put it bluntly:
“It feels like we’re the backdrop to a PR campaign. They say all the right things. But on the street, you still see empty lots and people waiting for checks.”
The Short Memory That Cost Us
I sometimes think politicians understand Americans better than we’d like to admit.
They know we have the attention span of a gnat.
They know if they can just survive a couple of weeks of scrutiny—if they can ride out the news cycle—most people will move on.
And they’re usually right.
That’s how entire communities get left to rot in the aftermath of fires, floods, or hurricanes.
That’s how “We will rebuild stronger” becomes a hollow slogan.
That’s how you end up with more time spent on televised raids in another state than on the basic work of making people whole again right here.