The conservative political machine runs on outrage

The conservative political machine runs on outrage
David Faris

...Many commentators argue that being mean to members of the Trump administration or trying to excommunicate them from the public sphere somehow plays into the hands of the right. It's an argument made mostly by centrists who you might think of as Normalists — those who believe that in spite of this administration's many egregious affronts to civic decency, the Constitution, and the spirit of American democracy, its individual agents must be treated just like any other prominent figure from any other administration.

Thus, Corey Lewandowski, a violent, mendacious sociopath, and Sean Spicer, a man who proudly and indisputably tossed propaganda at the press corps for months, can both be given gigs at Harvard's Institute for Politics. In the Normalist view of the political universe, there is apparently little short of mass murder, violent insurrection, or perhaps certain kinds of civil crime that would merit expulsion from public life.

This critique is doubly wrong. It elides the seriousness of the Trump administration's transgressions, but it also presumes, falsely, that there is anything "the left" could do about this dynamic anyway, civilly or otherwise....

The point is this: The right's outrage politics need no sustenance. It's like a virus, and you are the host. If the Red Hen restaurant didn't exist, Fox News would find something else, for without a constant supply of minor slights and puffed-up grievances to convey to their aging white viewers, what exactly would happen on this network 24 hours a day? The mission of Fox News and its ilk is to scour this enormous country every day for something that will keep its viewers in a constant state of spittle-flecked fury.

http://theweek.com/articles/781084/conservative-political-machine-runs-outrage