Donald Trump has all the symptoms of Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); trouble paying attention, impulsive behavior, acting without thinking about the result, and being overly active.  Specifically, since DJT announced that he was giving himself two weeks to decide if the United States would join Israel in bombing Iran’s nuclear sites, global attention has been focused on Iran. The world “stayed tuned,” and asked, Will he or won’t he bomb? But just because Trump keeps being impulsive and acting without thinking of results, there is no reason for us to follow his every whim. Our attention must not shift from the situations in Gaza, the Russian/Ukraine war, the No Kings protests, and elsewhere.

Remember immigration? Harvard? USAID? UNRWA? U.S. Institute of Peace? The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts? DOGE? NIH defunding? Elon Musk? as well as Trump’s amassing billions in personal wealth as Matthew Stevenson so astutely described? If we want to be up-to-date, do we have to follow his frenetic activity?

There something pathological about this acceleration of time. Trump’s very limited attention span has become the global political norm. His ADHD symptoms have us struggling to keep up. We are all trying to follow his rhythm. But can we keep track of his frenzied impulses and not forget the past? There are important human issues that should not be forgotten or relegated to back pages in the media or in the recesses of our minds. He is not only exhausting us, he is taking our attention away from issues that warrant continuing engagement.

For example: What is happening in Gaza during the intensified Iranian/Israeli conflict now that that the United States has bombed three Iranian nuclear sites? Will international humanitarian aid workers be finally allowed to feed the two million starving Palestinians? Have there been any significant changes in the humanitarian situation in Gaza since the bogus Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s aid distribution led to the shooting of hundreds of desperate people rushing to limited aid stations?

In addition; now that Greta Thunberg and the peace flotilla have been stopped as well as the Global March to Gaza, should we forget the International Court of Justice’s calling Israel’s actions plausible genocide or the International Criminal Court’s warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu as well as the increasing aggressiveness of the Israeli West Bank settlers?

What about Russia and Ukraine? Don’t forget that Trump has been in office 23 weeks. He said he would end the conflict within 24 hours after being elected. He even insinuated he could be a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Remember when we were all put on high alert about his upcoming telephone conversations with Vladimir Putin, hopeful that some deal to end the conflict would be forthcoming?

There are human consequences to the Russian invasion that should not slip away from our radar screen. In early June, CNN reported nearly one million Russian soldiers have been killed or injured since February 2022. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights verified a total of 46,085 civilian Ukrainian casualties as of May 31, 2025. In addition, Elisabeth Haslund, UNHCR representative for Ukraine, told The Independent in February 2025: “After three years of full-scale invasion, and 11 years since the war began in the east, the humanitarian situation in Ukraine is dire. Millions of people have been forced to flee their homes, and need humanitarian support.”

How quickly our focus can shift. Shock and awe is not just a military strategy. It has different forms. Whether shock and awe is being used by Trump and Company purposively to divert our attention, there is no denying that they are dictating the global rhythm and headlines. In an interview with David Leonhardt in the New York Times, the journalist and Times Opinion writer M. Geesen made several pertinent observations related to shock exhaustion.

Geesen used her journalistic experiences in Putin’s Russia to describe what people do when there is a negative, violent change of circumstances; “I think it’s a very human, and in a way very beautiful, desire to normalize, to habituate, to find footing in any situation, and to keep on living,” she observed. “It’s sort of a great, life-affirming ability that we have, except it has a way of normalizing things that we really shouldn’t live with.”

Moving from Geesen’s Russian experiences to the U.S., Leonhardt asked: “How do you think it matters to…exhaustion and numbing out, that so much…in the United States has happened in a span of weeks or months, as opposed to years?”

Geesen replied: “It really scares me …because it’s just an incredible amount of destruction in a very short amount of time, and democratic institutions are not designed to respond to things quickly.” She went on to name summary deportations, the attack on the judiciary, the attack on universities, attacks on the media, etc., what she called “The decimation of the federal government.”

What are the consequences of this accelerated attack on democratic institutions? “Trump,” she noted, “has opened all the fronts. I really fear that most people will look at it and, first of all, respond to their subjective feeling that their own lives haven’t changed that much. Or if they have changed, they can still live with it and then stop paying attention.” And now we add the bombings in Iran to the list of fast-moving negative events.

Trump has given a full-court press to our ability to assimilate the news. Many of us are “shock exhausted” and “numbed out.” How are we to deal with a U.S. president who acts impulsively in accelerated time? How should we distance ourselves from his ADHD symptoms without becoming ADHD ourselves? Our priority should be not to forget, not to be impulsive, not to follow DJT’s rhythm. We should not “stay tuned” to his channel, yet remain engaged. Those in Gaza, the West Bank, Russia, Ukraine, Sudan and elsewhere must not be forgotten. Trump has a very limited attention span; we should not follow his example.

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