If you believe what you see on the internet, outrage is one of the only things we have left to feel these days. The cycle goes like this: Someone somewhere has done something simply unforgivable and your Facebook feed is full of it. The news trickles down from the young and in-the-know to those well-intentioned neophyte progressives who’ve only recently joined the noise. Your second-choice prom date is unfriending anyone who disagrees with her (she’s had it this time), your least favorite aunt is up in arms, and your fifth-grade math teacher wonders what kind of hell our country is becoming. Once the initial excitement blows over, it becomes clear that this is all part of the irredeemably racist, xenophobic, cisheterotransmisogynistic leviathan that is our culture. The incident is fit neatly into whatever existing narrative we have at hand, and just like that, we move on.
But our outrage goes flaccid if we don’t keep feeding it. Soon enough other controversies will flare up, each time backed by ever more shocking details. Many such scandals center on celebrities, who risk crucifixion by #activists every time they open their mouths. Last week, Lil Wayne endured just that after claiming he feels no connection to the Black Lives Matter movement in an interview on ABC’s “Nightline.” This comes only a month after Weezy claimed he’s never experienced racism and actually “thought it was over.” Granted, Lil Wayne doesn’t sound like he knows much about BLM in either interview, but do comments like this really qualify as “a betrayal”? Are his lived experiences less valid than anyone else’s?
The narrowing number of opinions it’s acceptable to express publicly to express in public is an issue in its own right, but our outrage addiction is a symptom of another, larger problem: Politics have become a battleground of feelings. On the left, it’s played out in the rise of identity politics, with its axiomatic idea that the personal is political. Some of the defining debates of today’s campus left — like those over safe spaces and trigger warnings — hinge on feelings of unease or anxiety and don’t seem concerned with objective or quantifiable conditions. Such subjective experiences can’t be denied, so the bait-and-switch lies in making discomfort the basis for political action. If how I feel as an [insert identity] person should determine what others are and aren’t allowed to say, I have the final word.
On the right, similar feelings of discomfort (and disgust, I might add) drive Evangelicals’ ongoing quest to impose traditional values and deprive the assorted degenerates who offend them of their civil rights. This year, Trumpism has provided a new, scarier, even more fact-resistant way for Middle America to express its outrage. Trump actively parodies the pedestal upon which the left sets its feelings, while nonetheless basing his appeal almost exclusively on feelings of economic uncertainty and fear over violence and cultural change. By meeting outrage with outrageousness, Trump’s movement is giving liberals exactly what we deserve.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not discounting feelings all together (I’m a humanities major, after all). I understand the social appeal of expressing outrage and why it’s easy to think strong emotions have the best chance of being heard. I’m also not here to deny that there are real injustices in our society worth feeling outraged about. But outrage often comes at the expense of nuance, and debates with only one side worth hearing are rare indeed. When expressing outrage is our only reason for entering into dialogue, we become a civil society with our fingers jammed in our ears.
Outrage can be a powerful force for bringing us to the political table, but once we’re there, we should consider discarding or at least sending it to the sidelines. All the shouting in the world isn’t worth as much a well-reasoned, calmly expressed argument. After more than a year and a half of I can’t believe he said that! and How dare she delete that!, it’s clear that we need a way forward. In my view, no reasonable person could look at this year’s election and feel proud of how it’s played out. So, as Americans everywhere hit the voting booths tomorrow, perhaps our only consolation can be that it’s finally finished. Whatever the result, you’re sure to see a lot of outrage in response, and I can only hope that too is almost over.
Contact Iain Espey at iespey ‘at’ stanford.edu.