Are We Still Capable Of Outrage? Are You?
WikiLeaks document dumps over the last year or so on the quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and State Department diplomatic cables, among others, begs an important question: Are we still capable of outrage?
The past decade has been a carnival of disasters beginning with the 9/11 attacks and followed by the fool’s mission in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression with a slo-mo jobless recovery, a deeply fractured body politic roiled by renewed class, culture and race warfare, the BP oil spill, and as the document dumps make glaringly obvious, a government that excels at lurching from crisis to crisis.
Speaking only for myself as an employed, high and dry veteran with good health insurance who has been able to work up a good case of outrage in years past, bombshells just aren’t what they used to be. I’m feeling outrage deficient and also suffer from a bit of empathy overload (well gee, why should you be surprised if you chose to live at the beach and your house is swept away in a hurricane?) and that’s worrisome because it’s just a short ride from those places to outright apathy.
Have mused long and hard on this state of affairs (actually, it crossed my mind in the shower the other day), I believe that the root of my semi-malaise, which seems to be shared by a good many of us, is because we feel disempowered.
We don’t think the country is headed in the right direction. We don’t trust our government because of its capacity to screw up. We don’t trust liberals because if they were right they would have had more converts. We don’t trust conservatives because many of them have lost their minds. We don’t trust the news media because of its capacity to be led as if it had a big ring in its nose. We don’t trust big business because it would rather make obscene profits than hire workers. We don’t trust banks and other financial institutions because they and only they control the economy. And to air a personal gripe, I don’t trust the food-industry jackals who reduced the size of my favorite shredded mozzarella cheese from 10 ounces to 7 ounces while raising the price.
Add to that the fact that even the most fervent Barack Obama supporters, including myself, feel . . . well, let down and you’ve got a perfect storm of disempowerment.
12 Responses to “Are We Still Capable Of Outrage? Are You?”
We must support our country right or wrong even if it shrinks us into the oblivion of nothingness.
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. JFK
Sacrifice…Sacrifice…Sacrifice…Sacrifice….
If you are poor all that you have worth anything is your life and it would seem now that that must be tendered.
If you are rich, well, you can give up your jet airplane, though it seems so unfair.
“If you are rich, well, you can give up your jet airplane, though it seems so unfair.”
Sorry, but there’s a little too much to be outraged at, right now.
Perhaps you’re having a Clemenceau moment. But I don’t think it’s a journey into apathy as much as into humility about how many problems we can actually solve. If you become convinced that the cost of bailing someone out is often three more people needing bailouts, you start supporting fewer of them.
Great post. By the way, can you please ask your site admin to add a Facebook “Like” button to posts?
bradbel:
Will do.
To put it succinctly: great post !!
Pretty good, Shaun. Less mozzarella means less spaghetti and results in fewer calories. Or is that more apathy? When you are getting screwed from so many directions it is like being in a tag team match with gorillas; hard to get outraged when you are just trying to survive.
dduck:
That’s a terrific observation. I, fortunately, am not trying to survive, I am surviving, but for people less fortunate than myself that can indeed be the case.
By the by, the mozzarella is for manicotti not spaghetti sauce. I’ll send you the recipe.
Thanks anyway, but I’m on a diet of platitudes and bromides.
There are those who have predicted you would eat your words, Dduck. And there you go!
Mmmmm, good……………