Little Nasties Everywhere

Getting Familiar With Outrage Fatigue

What a great week in politics, eh! Another comedian gets canceled for making jokes the president doesn’t like. Then he gets brought back! The FCC chairman threatens punishment for disfavored speech! Autocracy lurches into the light! A memorial service turns into a political rally.

Calm yourself.

Naked corruption rules the highest office, bribery cases are dropped, and the rest of us fear to say anything.

Deep breaths, now. Count to four with each one.

Let’s not forget the president selling citizenship like a credit card to wealthy buyers. Or the weaponization of the Justice Department. Or the disaster now unfolding in health policy.

Get centered. Think of your quiet place.

It makes me proud to have once been an American! I remember when politicians were restrained by their own moral codes and politics functioned like a serious debate, not the Whack-a-Mole game it has become.

Peace, let us have peace.

And I love it! We have the Pentagon making reporters pledge not to report anything that hasn’t been officially released. We have Trump’s former border Czar allegedly accepting a bribe of $50,000 to fix legislation. What new thing will astound us?

My friend, you have gone Outrage Happy. You have gone slightly bonkers on the bad news of the day.

You mean the unceasing bad news of the day.

We need to wrench your mind off current events for a while. No one wants to lose democracy to an obvious tyrant, but you need to get some distance from it right now. You are becoming a caustic partisan.

Don’t we need more of those? To counter those teeming hordes of them on the other side?

Not if becoming a caustic partisan squelches your humanity. There is no point in fighting for human dignity if you become inhuman doing it.

Spoken like a true ivory tower resident. This is a fight we’re in, don’t you know. We’ve got to become warriors.

You know, the unfortunate thing about engaging with Trump is that there is no effective way to rebuff him except using the tactics he uses: belittlement, nastiness, insults and cruelty. High-minded debate won’t work. Stating facts won’t work. Collaborative reasoning won’t work. And of course friendly persuasion goes nowhere. If you want to be on his playground you have to fight as dirty as he does.

Yeah.

So that’s possibly the worst charge you can bring against him: By dominating the public conversation he turns us all into Trump. Wherever he goes he spreads little Trumps everywhere.

What a horrible thought.

But you gotta resist that. Don’t let his Trump mind virus upset your equilibrium. Maintain your dignity. Walk with integrity and virtue.

I wish I could be as high-flown as all that. But really I just want to choke something.

But you know that strangulation is not any sort of answer, so put that out of your head. Maybe you could try tuning out for a while, for several days, a week, however long it takes. Don’t read the papers. Don’t read the news online. Keep the TV away from news channels. Don’t engage with the news at all.

No, I’ve gotta stay abreast of every barbarity perpetrated by this orange menace, this sink of self-deception. I’ve got to follow closely. If nothing else I want to stay awake during these undeniably historic times, to see how the United States fights off this infection, or if it does.

Oh, it will. You have heard me say before that when Trump is finally off the scene, pulses will lower, civility will increase, the MAGA cult will search in vain for a new lord and dash itself to tiny droplets upon the rocks. No one will be found who possesses the precise combination of narcissism, delusion and chutzpah as the master. No one will want to cop to the hatred he embraces or the cruelties he practices. The pendulum will swing back.

And you are every bit the Pollyanna I would expect of an effete eastern pencil-neck.

I may be a Pollyanna but you’ll disappear in a pit of bile if you don’t get some distance. Hear me, now: The first defense against the man is to not be like him, a good rule any time virtue confronts coarseness. That by itself would be a victory worthy of the best warriors. Meantime, continue to chop wood and carry water. And hang on as well as you can.

I’m hanging.