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Mark Morford: Outrage fatigue? Get over it

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Briar Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Nov-14-07 07:55 AM
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Mark Morford: Outrage fatigue? Get over it
Outrage fatigue? Get over it

Are you sick of being sick? Suffering way too much Bush-induced nausea? Well, tough

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist


I know how it is. You've had it up to here. There are only so many stories about blood and death and pain you can take, only so many times you can hear about random shootings and corporate malfeasance and how BushCo's squad of scabrous flying monkeys have, say, supported torture or endorsed wiretapping or gouged the nation for another $200 billion to pay for a failed war. Your nerves are raw and your heart is tired and the media will just not shut the hell up already about the sadness and the war and the mayhem and the Cheney and the doom doom doom.

It is outrage fatigue, and it is epidemic. It's that feeling that we are being hammered unlike any time in recent history with so many appalling and disgusting and violently un-American incidents and scandals and manipulations that our b.s.-detectors are smoking like an old V-8 engine on a hot summer's day and it's all we can do to get up every day without screaming.

What's more, it's not the mere quantity of moral insults, either. It's the bizarre absurdity of the subject matter, the things we are being forced to consider, or reconsider, that seem to make it all so horrific.

Torture? Are you kidding? Allegedly the most civilized, the most morally aware nation on the planet and we are still debating, in the highest courts and government offices in the land, about whether the United States should strap human beings to gnarled metal benches in rancid foreign bunkers and inflict such inexplicable terror and fear upon them that they confess to things they didn't even do just to get us to stop? Is this the Middle Ages? Are we regressing back to the goddamn cave?

...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/11/14/notes111407.DTL&nl=fix
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Demeter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Nov-14-07 08:19 AM
Response to Original message
1. ImpeachMints: Cure for What Ails You!
Buy a boxful today and pass them out to your Congresscritters.
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silverweb Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Nov-14-07 12:04 PM
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2. One of his best.
I just read this in my email and quickly searched to see if anyone had posted it yet. You beat me! :)

Terrific wrapup at the end:

Outrage is rich with humanistic understanding. It is not some evangelical Christian parent "outraged" that her kid saw a woman's nipple on TV. It is not some right-wing Family Council "outraged" that someone put S&M outfits on Barbie, or that some art gallery is displaying Jesus as a woman, or that scientists dared to say that stem cell research does not equal abortion, or that the mayor isn't taking care of all the potholes and stray kitties. That's not outrage, that's reactionary whining.

True outrage, like Olbermann's, like (occasionally, hopefully) this column's, like what you should ideally be experiencing on a daily basis while Bush is in office, is honed and sharp and poignant. It contains a powerful sense of deeply informed decency, and therefore has a true feel for when that sense has been violated. Outrage has meat and substance and intellectual nourishment. It is actually healthy.

Smart, informed outrage engages you and fires your heart, your mind. It is fuel. It is the reason you claim you enjoy being an American, to question malevolent government actions and take a stand and demand accountability where there has, for the past seven years, been none. Bottom line: We simply cannot let them convince us, by way of an all-out assault on science, sex, love, et al, that the good fight just ain't worth fighting.

After all, the flying monkeys are far from done raiding the closet and stealing your babies and making a mockery of everything wise and calm and open-hearted people hold dear. And baby, if you ain't outraged about that, something is very wrong indeed.


Morford certainly has a wonderful way with words!
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Briar Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Nov-14-07 04:02 PM
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3. "And baby, if you ain't outraged about that, something is very wrong indeed."
He surely does.
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