Out Rage

I have a new perspective.  I don't have any expectation (or probably intention) of sticking to it.  But I hope I can at least keep it in focus as a general guiding light to lead the way.  And it's that I just don't want to be outraged every day..

To be clear, I don't mean angry or upset or wary, concerned, or cautionary, or on alert, or resisting, or...well, fill in the blank.  Any of those words or others like that.  But "outraged" every single day, all the time, is exhausting, exhausts others, and risks missing all the small moment which together can be critically important.

In fact, I would also suggest that I think Trump likes creating outrage.  It's not that he likes being the target of a firestorm,  he doesn't, but he likes creating chaos, likes inciting outrage within his base, things they can get up-in-arms over, likes creating problems that he then can claim to fix, likes the attention, likes people being outraged at everything, clamoring about everything, because without focus that gives him cover to create some other outrage and let yesterday's outrage slide between the cracks.  And being outraged all the time wears everyone out on all sides..

So, being eternally outraged is, in many ways, the foundation of every structure in Trump World.  Instead, I think, it's better to have that new-found perspective and take a step back, take a deep calming breath and view the landscape better.

To be clear, this isn't a "The Sky is Falling" Syndrome, where if you're always crying out no one will believe you.  Chicken Little is trying to warn everybody about something that isn't real.  Trump is very real.  And it's also not "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" Syndrome.  That's about alerting people all the time, relentlessly to a very real, very serious problem that just hasn't yet occurred, and when it does happen, everyone has tuned you out and no one listens.  What Trump does every day is a problem that is happening and most people are well-aware of how serious each one is, every day, sometimes on the hour.  This is more a case of...well, the best way to explain it is a comment my dad made years ago.

He and I had been watching some sports event on television. At one point, the announcer commented about some news concerning a coach and said that the person had had "a minor heart attack."  My dad, who was a physician, with a specialty in cardiology, sort of snorted.  "There is no such thing as a 'minor heart attack,'" he said. "It's a heart attack.  It's very serious.  Any heart attack is serious.  Some heart attacks can cause more damage than another -- but any heart attack is serious."

As I sat watching the news yesterday, stories about Bob Woodward's book and Michael Cohen's book and The Atlantic article and now Peter Strzok's book and stories of Rudy Giuliani meeting with Russian intelligence agents and Trump's press conference saying he never lied when it's on tape that he repeatedly lied -- and all of this is within days of each other, and it leaves out everything from two weeks ago and before...and what's to come, and leaves out that 196,328 Americans are dead...so far, probably going up to 250,000 deaths or so -- I sort of had that sensibility my dad was talking about:

It's all serious.  There is no minor outrage.  It's all outrage.  But unlike a heart attack, you not only can pick and choose what to deal with, but you should, because otherwise it all blends into one another and one serious outrage has no more impact than another, and you risk a certain sameness settling in, and something seems worthy of "outrage" because the level is the same, any outrage is serious.  But what you are able to do is focus on the outrage that "can cause more damage than another."

This is not ignoring the outrage.  This is not normalizing Trump.  As I said, the anger, upset, wariness, concern, caution, alert and resistance are all there. But it's accept that pretty much most people today actually get the outrage.  So, rather than being outraged by absolutely everything -- "Oh, my God, look!  There, across the street, that house is on fire!  Look, over there!  That house!  It's burning!!!  Look -- look, it's on fire!."  To which the person standing next to you says, "Yes, I can see. It's right in front of us." -- you look for what gives the most meaning.

It's like being angry, furious even, that someone punched the grocery check-out clerk and ran off with a six-pack of beer, but not outraged by it -- because someone else had firebombed the store and shot six people.

It's all serious, but some things can cause more damage.

And you also have to conserve your energy so that when outrage is called for, you can give it all it deserves.  Besides, there's a certain comfort in knowing that there's SO much outrage and SO many people outraged by it, that you know for certain that if  you take a step back in preparation, somebody somewhere -- in fact, lots of somebodies -- is picking up the slack and carrying the outraged banner high about it.

Still, as I said, this is merely my new perspective.  I am quite certain I won't be holding myself to it in full practice.  At the very least, one does need to vent.  But in the end, even anger, upset, wariness, concern, caution, alert and resistance have their place -- and sometimes let you focus whatever you're trying to say even better.