Outrage Fatigue

“Outrage Fatigue;  (noun):  the exhaustion and entropy that occurs from too much outrage.  Occurs in waves, often during peak election cycles.  Outrage fatigue tends to afflict politically active people, and can be worse when your party is not in power, or has a power deficit.”  

Are you tired of reading/watching/listening to the news or social media and feeling outraged?  Are you cynical about everything political these days?  Do you have a feeling of hopelessness whenever you hear some new detail about the former swamp and the present swamp in Washington DC?  I am!  But I’m also fighting against it.

In my opinion, Outrage Fatigue is a dangerous and disabling disease that typically causes a person to stop ranting and raving about abnormalities, unethical behavior, injustices, and the like.  It causes a person to stop caring about how others are treated.  It is similar to a silencer on a rifle—it causes one to stop making noise,  rattling the cage, speaking out, or ranting and raving.

My suspicion is that the powers that be would like for all of us to experience this fatigue—to just shut-up and be quiet, to ignore and accept whatever is happening—no questioning, no thinking, no human values applied.  Mr. Trump’s oft-repeated line about “Nobody” knows more about anything and everything than Mr. Trump himself, says it all. His “Nobody” includes you, me, and everyone else.  Isn’t that what Donald Trump suggested back in January 2016 when he boasted, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”   He wants everyone to come down with this disease of outrage fatigue—to reach a place of such exhaustion, cynicism, apathy and hopelessness that nobody cares anymore what he says or does.  This is the reason why media outlets that report adverse news about his administration are labeled “Fake News.”  He really does want you to become distrustful and exhausted of a free press so that you no longer care what is truth and what is fiction, what is real and what is unreal.

I recall journalist Eugene Robison writing in January 2017 something to this effect, “We must never normalize Donald Trump.”  But that is exactly what will happen, and in fact, has happened and is happening right now—we are suffering from the disease Outrage fatigue—we are “normalizing” what is not normal by our acquiescence.  Where’s the outrage?