Outrage Is Now the Norm

We risk losing our sense of the outrageous

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

Outrage that presidential choices will be a doddering corporate party liner or an illogically charismatic pathologically liar.

Outrage that gun lobbyists hold a nation hostage through a sycophantic (or is it psychophantic?) Republican Party, a political organization that has more in common with Mexican cartels than an American political party, allowing a mass shooting a week to take place. Their solution? More guns.

Outrage that the government allows corporations to run roughshod on the populace and use U.S. citizens as economic cannon fodder to keep bottom lines in shareholders’ happy place.

Outrage that hospitals and drug companies now offer a deal you can’t refuse; your money or your life. Use to be only the mafia would stoop to that.

Outrage that the U.S. is the only industrialized country without universal healthcare; and the Republican Party, wealthy elite, and Fox News propaganda machines have convinced half the American people that we have the world’s best healthcare and that all other nations have people keeling over dead in lines blocks long to see an incompetent hack.

Outrage that carbon dioxide pours into the atmosphere in ever-increasing amounts while our government promises it will be fixed by 2050.

Outrage that a Christian version of Sharia law is being implemented across a country that used to claim it was the home of the free.

Outrage that we have to bear witness to the collapse of a civilization that held such promise, and it is because of something so banal as greed.

Outrage that we can’t really change our government. The political process is now controlled by the wealthy. Perhaps it always has been. The difference now is the wealthy have no concern or sense of duty to those less fortunate. The poor are that way because God doesn’t like them, so they deserve their fate.

Outrage that network news basically ignores the fact that our world is crumbling physically and socially.

Outrage that right wing wealthy corporatists are exhorting Americans to have more babies in a world with 8 billion people; a world that has overshot its capacity by at…