The Politics of Outrage.

To paraphrase a popular quote: Life is hard; It’s Even Harder When You’re Partisan. 

It seems this age we are in has made life almost unbearable for the partisan left and the partisan right.  There are so many things to be outraged about, yet our politicians find more value in feeding the outrage than they do in working towards viable solutions.  How does one cope on daily basis?

There is a line from the Cary Grant – Tony Curtis movie “Operation Petticoat” Tony Curtis, playing Lt. Holden, is put in charge of finding parts needed to fix the submarine commanded by Cary Grant, as Lt Cmdr Matt Sherman.  In one scene Lt. Holden leaves the sub while the navy base is under attack.  When he is asked where he is going he offers this memorable truth, “In confusion there is profit.”  That seems to be the strategy in play in today’s political division.

We have problems with immigration, who should come and how should they be qualified for entry?  Today, it is better to be outraged at the separation of children from adults at the border than it is to find a solution that prevents that from being a necessity.  This shouldn’t be a partisan issue, but it clearly is.  During the eight years of the previous administration, we saw a hodge-podge of enforcement and non-enforcement of immigration laws.  The DOJ was accused of gun-running that resulted in at least one death of a border agent, some people were welcomed and others denied, and yet children and adults were still separated when detained and very little effort was made to ensure they were reunited after the mind-numbingly slow decision process.  The press and the partisan supporters of the DNC said little or nothing about the moral injustice.  Put a hated Republican in charge and all the sudden it is the end of the world, and people will die.

On the opposing side, there at least is not a rock-solid set of approved talking points as there is on the left. We have everything from President Trump’s promise of a wall to grants for limited immunity from deportation.  It would seem to anyone who considers this spectrum there is room to negotiate a new law, but when one side says there can only be one answer, that room quickly shrinks to the hardline rhetoric we have today.  We were supposed to have fixed this in the 1990s, under President Clinton when we granted immunity to millions with the intent we would have laws we could agree to. What has changed?  Who has altered the requirements for immigration?  Are we to be a nation that believes in the rule of law or not?  To me, that is the real question before us on immigration.  It appears one side says no.

Then we have the Russians and their impact on preventing the favored DNC candidate from achieving her rightful place in American history.  What makes matters so much worse is she lost to someone who the media and the party had vilified to such an extent that he was viewed as almost certainly someone who would be little more than a footnote in history, much like William Henry Harrison.  At the time of the election, the DNC had predicted the economy would never recover, the markets would crash, healthcare for the nation (especially women) would end and people would die.  On election night some small percentage of the 60 million or so voters who voted for HRC decided their outrage was just too great to contain.  They bought knit hats and took to the streets to show the world their disdain for the nation’s choice for the next president.  Calls for investigations on how this outrage could have occurred began immediately and here we are two years later still waiting for the Special Counsel to shed some light on how the Russians persuaded some 60 million voters to choose someone other than HRC. 

Of course, over the past couple of decades, we’ve developed an intolerance for ideas and thoughts that might invoke discomfort and force debate on an issue.  The definition of “hate speech,” although fluid, is now part of our language.  It sure appears the demands for politically correct speech is less about offending and more about controlling the debate.  When only one side gets to call the other racist it is no longer a debate, is it?  I give you, as an example HRC’s latest snappy comeback.  When an interviewer attributed a quote to Cory Booker, HRC corrected her and said that was actually from Eric Holder.  When the interviewer apologized Ms. Clinton forgave her saying “they all look alike.”  The audience laughed because after all this was Hillary Clinton and she’s a Democrat and by current definition can’t be racist.

We are bombarded by the idea that white racist organizations are going to undo all the civil rights minorities have fought so hard to gain and expand, yet how many white racists are really in power now that Robert Byrd (D-WV) is gone?   The Southern Poverty Law Center shows a marked decline in the number of groups since 2011 when estimates put the number of hardcore and sympathizers at about 300,000.  For the record that is .09% of the nation.  So, 1/10^th of one percent of the nation is classified as racist yet how many times have we heard someone who disagreed with the President called a racist?  Of course, with critical race theory that is the desired option, since only white people can be racist the best way to control the conversation is to shut it down.

Once again, the issue of putting on makeup has hit the news.  NBC has suspended and will quite possibly can Megyn Kelly for her comments about how as a child putting on “blackface” was okay and opining about why it isn’t today.  Having never had a desire to wear blackface, but watching the likes of Al Jolson play exaggerated characters in movies about the Minstrel shows I can certainly understand why many would find the idea of a whole bunch of white kids mocking their color as offensive, but the outrage that comes from these events today does not appear to be based on a compelling desire for cultural sensitivities nearly as much as it comes from a desire to control the conversation.  Just as in the #metoo movement there is evidence that when some liberal personalities chose to use blackface for the sake of their comedic benefit there was little mention of how offensive this was to black culture.

Finally, we have become a nation that selectively condones or condemns actual hate speech as represented by vile acts of terror against political or religious targets.  It sure seems the focus of these condemnations is more about affixing blame than actually ending any political speech that may incite the actual individuals involved.  One side lays the blame on President Trump, and of course, President Trump’s supporters have an equally large number of examples that will lay the blame on his opposition.  Is affixing blame for mean and ugly speech really ever going to solve a problem where individuals feel empowered to kill or attempt to kill others?  I doubt it.

At the end of the day, isn’t that what all this outrage is about?  The need to control the debate so your side wins?  The question we will see answered in the next week or so is can the idea of outrage be overplayed to the detriment of the victim party?  Will the voters reject the vilification of good people by the outraged left or will they reward them for their victim status?