SCOTT BESSENT AND THE ART OF DIVERSION

When the facts become inconvenient, change the subject. Better yet, change the target.

Give the public something else to examine, someone else to blame, another argument worth having. The original problem does not need to disappear. It only needs to surrender the center of the stage.

This is not new. It’s politics. It is not unique to Republicans or Democrats. It did not begin with Donald Trump, television, social media or the 24-hour news cycle. Political leaders have been redirecting public attention for as long as there has been public attention to divert.

What has changed is the speed. A difficult question can now become yesterday’s question before anyone has answered it. And that makes the ancient art of political diversion considerably more powerful.

In this episode of Fair Game, Dr. Gary Kellner begins with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and a claim the Secretary made about the price of fuel. Bessent has pointed to Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy infrastructure as a main contributor to the worldwide energy shock. Ukraine has been striking Russian refineries and other energy facilities in an effort to damage an industry that provides Moscow with revenue and supports its ability to wage war on Ukraine. Bessent argues that those attacks have tightened global supplies and put upward pressure on prices.

Perhaps? Let’s agree it didn’t help.

Ukraine’s attacks have seriously damaged Russian refining. Russia has restricted diesel exports in response to domestic shortages, and the loss of Russian refined products has contributed to an already tight international market.

But that is where this becomes interesting. Because a fact can be true and still become a distraction if properly presented.

The question is not simply whether Ukraine has affected energy prices. The larger question is why that particular piece of the story receives emphasis when Americans ask why filling a car, a truck or a tractor has suddenly become so expensive.

That is where economics ends and politics begins.

THE MAN WHO KNOWS BETTER

Scott Bessent is not an obvious candidate for economic confusion.

Before becoming the 79th Secretary of the Treasury, he spent more than four decades in global investment management. He served as chief investment officer of Soros Fund Management, founded the global macro investment firm Key Square Capital Management, specialized in currencies and fixed-income markets and taught economic history at Yale. The Treasury Department describes a career spent analyzing precisely the kinds of international dislocations now roiling energy markets.

This matters.

Bessent understands that oil does not have a single price because a single politician, refinery, country or war determines it. Energy markets are networks. Crude production matters. Refining capacity matters. Shipping lanes matter. Inventories matter. Sanctions matter. Insurance matters. Expectations matter. War matters.

And right now, several of those forces are colliding.

Ukrainian attacks have damaged Russian refining and reduced the amount of Russian diesel reaching international markets. At the same time, the conflict involving the United States, Israel and Iran has disrupted Middle Eastern energy flows and shipping, while American diesel inventories have been unusually tight. Reuters reported in late September that U.S. retail diesel prices had exceeded $6.50 a gallon amid reduced refining capacity in both the Middle East and Russia.

So Bessent did not invent Ukraine’s role. He selected it.

That distinction is important.

Political diversion rarely requires manufacturing an entirely fictional story. In fact, it often works better when it begins with something demonstrably true. Take one fact from a complicated chain of causes. Move it to the front. Repeat it. Allow everything behind it to become scenery.

The audience may eventually forget there was a chain at all.

DIVERSION

There is an innocent meaning to the word.

Parents divert children. Teachers divert wandering attention. Caregivers divert patients who have become trapped in confusion or distress. The technique does not necessarily deny what came before. It changes where attention goes next.

Politicians do something remarkably similar.

A politician facing an uncomfortable question does not always need to answer it. He can answer a different question. A government facing an unpopular consequence does not necessarily need to deny the consequence. It can emphasize another cause. A party under pressure does not have to convince voters that everything is fine. It may only need to convince them that somebody else is responsible. Watch a skilled interview carefully and you can see the movement happen.

The interviewer asks A.

The politician acknowledges A for half a sentence. Then presents B. Within moments everyone is arguing about B.  

A has vanished in a haze of verbiage.

This is more sophisticated than simply telling a lie because a lie can be disproved. Diversion can survive fact-checking. Every sentence may be technically defensible while the larger impression remains incomplete.

That is why the distinction matters.

The most effective political argument may not change the facts. It changes what we are looking at.

ROME: GIVE THEM SOMETHING TO WATCH

Nearly two thousand years before cable television, Rome understood the politics of attention.

The phrase that survived is panem et circenses — bread and circuses.

It comes from the Roman satirist Juvenal, writing during an era in which ordinary Romans had surrendered much of the direct political power they once possessed. His complaint was not simply that Romans enjoyed chariot races, gladiators or free grain.

It was that their attention had changed.

A population once preoccupied with political power had become preoccupied with provision and spectacle.

The Circus Maximus could hold an enormous crowd. Chariot racers became celebrities. Successful drivers became extraordinarily wealthy. Emperors appeared at the games, sponsored spectacles and understood that the arena was one of the places where ruler and ruled encountered each other. The crowd would cheer, jeer, petition and express displeasure. The circus was entertainment, but it was also political theater.

We should be careful not to flatten Roman history into a slogan.

The emperors did not simply throw another gladiator into the arena every time taxes went up. Games had religious, cultural and social purposes, and Roman crowds were masters at using public spectacles to voice political grievances.

But Juvenal had identified something larger.

Attention itself could become political currency. Keep people fed. Keep them watching. Give them something immediate, dramatic and emotionally satisfying.

Modern PR men had a similar saying, “Make ‘em laugh. Make ‘em cry. Make’em want to buy!”

The difficult business of power becomes less visible behind the spectacle.

That is not exactly what Scott Bessent is doing. Twenty-first-century America is not imperial Rome, and a Treasury Secretary discussing diesel prices is not an emperor staging chariot races.

The connection is the mechanism.

Move the eye.

That is diversion by spectacle.

And once you recognize it, you understand that diversion and redirection work in many ways. Sometimes you do not give the public something to watch.

You give it someone to dislike.

NIXON: CHANGE THE SUBJECT, CHANGE THE ENEMY

By 1971, Richard Nixon had a Vietnam problem.

The war was long, divisive and increasingly unpopular. Antiwar demonstrations had become a familiar part of American life. Veterans themselves were coming to Washington to protest.

Nixon could not make Vietnam disappear. But protesters could become a different political subject. And we know from Nixon’s own recorded conversations that he understood the opportunity.

On the eve of major demonstrations in 1971, White House polling found only 28 percent of respondents supporting the protests while 65 percent opposed them. Nixon immediately recognized the political opening. According to the Miller Center’s account of the tapes, he instructed his chief of staff to take on the demonstrators.

The distinction is extraordinary.

The war and the protest against the war were not the same question. One concerned American policy in Vietnam. The other concerned the behavior of Americans objecting to that policy.

But the second question was politically safer than the first.

Nixon privately understood something useful: violent or disruptive demonstrators were less popular than the war itself. If protest became disorder, the administration could talk about disorder. If demonstrators blocked streets, the argument could become law and order. If a minority behaved badly, their behavior could be used to color perceptions of a much broader antiwar movement.

Nixon moved the camera.

Vietnam was still there. American soldiers were still dying. The fundamental argument over the war had not been resolved. But now there was another argument available:

Look at the protesters.

This is diversion in a more potent form than bread and circuses because the new object of attention is not merely entertaining.

It is threatening. A spectacle captures attention. An enemy organizes it.

When people are frightened, angry or offended, they become easier to focus. Complexity narrows. Questions of cause become questions of allegiance.

Who are you with? Who are you against?

THE OLDEST TRICK IN THE COURTROOM

There is an old legal maxim that exists in several forms:

If the facts are on your side, pound the facts. If the law is on your side, pound the law. If neither is on your side, pound the table. The saying is frequently attributed to Carl Sandburg, who did publish a version of it in the twentieth century, although versions circulated before him.

Its survival tells us something. People recognize the technique.

The lawyer pounding the table is not strengthening his evidence. He is changing the experience of the argument. Volume replaces proof. Certainty replaces evidence. Performance occupies the space where reasoning was supposed to be.

Politics discovered the same thing long ago.

When you cannot dominate the evidence, dominate attention.  When the public is staring at something dangerous, give it something more emotionally satisfying to stare at. Preferably something with a face. Because systems are difficult to blame.

People are easy.

FIND SOMEBODY

Scapegoating is among humanity’s oldest political shortcuts.

The term itself comes from an ancient ritual described in the Book of Leviticus. Symbolically, the sins of the community were placed upon a goat that was then sent away into the wilderness. Thousands of years later, the metaphor survives because the psychological temptation survives.

A society has a complicated problem. Complicated problems are frustrating.

They may have ten causes, some stretching back decades or even centuries. Responsibility may be shared. Some causes may be beyond any government’s control. Others may involve decisions the public itself supported. Solutions may require sacrifice, patience or the admission that there is no immediate solution at all.

That is terrible political material.

A culprit is much easier. Inflation becomes somebody’s inflation. A war becomes somebody’s war. A shortage becomes somebody’s fault. Suddenly an incomprehensible system has a plot.

This does not mean every accusation of responsibility is scapegoating. Governments, institutions and individuals really do make consequential decisions and should be held accountable for them. The warning sign comes when explanation becomes suspiciously simple.

One cause swallow all the others. One villain explains the world.

And complexity itself begins to sound like an excuse.

THE DIVERSION QUESTION

Political scientists have studied the phenomenon for decades.

One branch of the research is known as diversionary theory: the idea that leaders facing trouble at home may sometimes benefit by directing public attention toward an external conflict or adversary. Another is the better-known “rally round the flag” effect, in which public support for national leadership can rise during an international crisis.

The evidence is more complicated than the cliché. International confrontation does not automatically rescue a government, and researchers disagree about when diversion works. But the underlying phenomenon is real enough to have generated decades of scholarship: external threats can change the way citizens evaluate domestic leadership, and international crises can reorder what the public considers important.

That is the historical deep dive worth remembering. The technique did not wait for TikTok.

Many U.S. presidents have understood that the agenda itself is power.

Franklin Roosevelt mastered radio not merely because he could explain policy but because he could decide what millions of Americans would think about together that evening. Richard Nixon understood television. Ronald Reagan understood the image. Bill Clinton understood rapid response. George W. Bush governed through one of the clearest examples of the rally effect following the September 11 attacks, when an external threat dramatically reorganized American political attention. Political scientists have studied that period specifically as an unusually strong example of Americans closing ranks behind a president during national crisis.

None of those examples proves cynical manipulation.

That matters.

Sometimes the crisis genuinely is the most important story.

The question is what happens when directing attention becomes a substitute for explaining responsibility.

THEN CAME THE ALGORITHM

For most of political history, diversion had one enormous limitation.

There were only so many places to direct people.

A president could give a speech. A campaign could run an advertisement. Newspapers could change their front pages. Television networks could lead with a different story.

Today the supply of distraction is effectively infinite. A political controversy begins at breakfast. By lunch there is a video. By midafternoon there is outrage over the video. By dinner the argument is no longer about the original event but about somebody’s reaction to somebody else’s reaction to the video. The subject has migrated three times. Nothing has been resolved.

Consider the energy story.

To explain current fuel prices honestly requires a map.

You need Russia and Ukraine. You need Iran and the Persian Gulf. You need refineries. You need inventories. You need international shipping. You need crude oil and refined products, which are related but not interchangeable. You need to understand why the United States can be one of the largest energy producers in the world and still be vulnerable to disruptions in global energy markets.

That explanation takes time. “Ukraine is driving up prices” takes seconds. That does not make the sentence false.

It makes the sentence powerful.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CAUSE AND BLAME

Cause is analytical. Blame is political. Cause asks: What produced this result? Blame asks: Whom should you be angry with?

Those questions could have the same answer.

Suppose five events contribute to a crisis. One accounts for a large share of the disruption. Another adds significant pressure. A third exposes a weakness that already existed. A fourth makes recovery more difficult. A fifth becomes the event politicians talk about most.

Which one “caused” the crisis?

Bessent himself described the present situation as an energy shock involving both Ukraine and Iran. Ukraine’s attacks on Russian refining have put some pressure on global refined-product supplies. Meanwhile, conflict around Iran and disruptions affecting Middle Eastern energy flows have been major drivers of oil and fuel prices.

The argument is not whether Ukraine has anything to do with American fuel prices.

The more interesting question is what happens when Ukraine becomes the answer.

The conversation moves. The frame changes. Instead of examining the forces shaping prices at the pump, attention shifts to a distant and politically potent cause.

That is the art of diversion.

THE POLITICS OF THE GAS PUMP

Gasoline and diesel have an unusual place in American politics.

You do not drive past a forty-foot sign announcing the current price of eggs. Milk does not advertise itself on street corners. Your electric bill does not flash its total beside the interstate.

Gasoline does. Its price is enormous, illuminated and repeated block after block.

Voters see it even when they are not buying it. That makes fuel prices politically dangerous.

And diesel moves through the economy in less visible ways. Farmers use it. Construction equipment uses it. Goods move because diesel moves. Higher diesel costs can travel through supply chains and eventually appear in prices that seem to have nothing to do with fuel.

This is why administrations of both parties discover very quickly that Americans tend to hold presidents responsible for gasoline prices even though presidents do not control gasoline prices like a thermostat.

When prices fall, presidents are happy to receive credit. When they rise, the explanation travels overseas.

Some of that is economic reality. Energy markets are global.

What politicians choose to emphasize is politics.

POUND THE VICTIM

And here we arrive at Dr. Gary Kellner’s hardest line.

If the facts are against you, pound the law. If the law is against you, pound the facts. If you have neither, pound the table.

But there is another possibility.

Pound the victim.

Ukraine did not choose this war. Russia invaded Ukraine. Ukraine subsequently developed an increasingly effective campaign against Russian energy infrastructure, in part because oil and refined products are economically important to Moscow and its war effort.

Those attacks have consequences. War has consequences.

But there is a moral and analytical difference between saying that Ukrainian attacks have contributed to a shortage and allowing Ukraine to become the explanation for the broader crisis.

One describes an economic effect. The other changes the protagonist.

The country defending itself becomes the country inconveniencing us. The drone strike becomes easier to see than the invasion that produced it. The consequence becomes detached from the cause that preceded it.

That is diversion at its most consequential.

CHANGE THE QUESTION

Donald Trump offered an unusually clear demonstration of diversion only weeks into his presidency.

In early 2017, Washington was consumed by questions about Russian interference in the presidential election and contacts between Russians and people associated with Trump.

Then, on March 4, Trump changed the question. He accused President Barack Obama of having Trump Tower wiretapped before the election.

Suddenly Washington had another story.

Had a sitting president used the surveillance powers of the United States government against the opposing party’s presidential candidate? Congress wanted evidence. Intelligence officials were questioned. The FBI was pulled into the controversy. Newspapers and television networks chased the allegation.

The accusation was extraordinary.

It also proved unsupported. FBI Director James Comey later told Congress that the bureau had examined the matter and had no information supporting Trump’s claim.

But by then something important had already happened. The argument had moved.

The question had been: What happened between Russia and the Trump campaign?

Now another question competed for the camera: What had the Obama administration done to Donald Trump?

You do not answer the question occupying the public. You introduce a different question—larger, angrier and more irresistible. The original question does not disappear.

But it leaves the center of the frame.

WATCH THE CAMERA

Perhaps that is the simplest way to understand modern political diversion.

Watch the camera.

The camera of attention. When an uncomfortable fact enters the frame, point the lens somewhere else.

The original fact remains. The price is still on the sign. The bill is still on the table. The question is still unanswered.

But now we are focused somewhere else.

And the most revealing political question is not whether what we are being shown is true.

It is why we are being shown it now.