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Where is the outrage? Each of us has an “outrage breaker,” similar to a circuit breaker, and when it trips we do the “Popeye,” i.e., “dats all I kin stands coz I can’t stands no more!” And then what happens? If the outrage is small and close to us, it results in “career changes,” broken friendships, marriages, teeth and such. But what happens when our Global outrage breaker trips?
You know when it happens. When it does, you are, as Derrick Jensen writes, Beyond Hope: “…when you quit relying on hope, and instead begin to protect the people, things, and places you love, you become very dangerous indeed to those in power.” Others talk about “Outrage Fatigue.” Joel Bleifuss asked the great Kurt Vonnegut to comment on it and Vonnegut replied, “About Outrage Fatigue: I knew what it was like to lose a battle. Now I know what it was like to lose a war.” He could have added, “Now, excuse me, will you let me through so I can microwave my burrito?”
That’s what it’s like at first… deadpan apathy. You know you’ve lost the war. Pick the outrage that trips the circuit… the woods are full of ‘em. For me it was the shrink-wrapped tons of c-notes on pallets being shipped to a war zone. After that, I just yawned at stories like the gold-plated fustercluck “Missile Defense System” or “The Worst Congress Ever” Yep, remember the c-note story? C-130 cargo planes loaded with 363 tons of cash (about $12 billion) to the (cough cough) “Coalition Provisional Authority” and why… surprise! Most of it vanished! Well, goollll-leee…
I don’t know why this one did it for me and not any of the others… the stolen election(s), tax ripoff, war, 9-11 crime, torture, USA PATRIOT,. blah blah blah. But after the c-note story, Bush could have delivered the SOU munching on a baby’s arm like that nuked burrito without so much as a hearty hi-yo fuggit from me. The outrage circuit had blown. That’s the low point. But there’s a difference between “hopeless” and “beyond hope.”
Then you go from outrage to rage… and it’s a cold, cold rage… not the stamp-on-your-hat twirling-pipe Popeye kind of mad… but the kind where, as Jensen says, “The socially constructed you died. The civilized you died. The manufactured, fabricated, stamped, molded you died. The victim died.” If you’re still worried about the “elections,” you ain’t there yet… but you will be. Go ahead and “vote,” pull the disconnected lever for Bama or Paul or Bug-on-the-wall. It has entertainment value.
But the truth is this: about half of your “fellow citizens” are dumber than a turd in a Dixie-cup. What will it take for them to put you on a train for the “detention centers?” About $10 an hour. You and your little dog too. And it won’t matter which stuffed suit is in the “Whitehouse” or “Congress” because they’re just soft-servs with big hair and a golf tee and no outrage breaker at all. Maybe their outrage circuit is like the vaudeville circuit… with the top bandito making asses of us all. And half of us really ARE asses.
The ass factor is why many of us think a new civil war is inevitable in Amerikkka. There’s about 30% of the pop who think that if you aint into military fetishism; you’re a “traitor,” and they regularly make some pretty blunt statements about dealing with “traitors.” Well, screw that. First, we have to marginalize these “morans” by satire and ridicule. Second, we have to present an alternative… like whacking the bat-shit insane “military budget” down to size and moving immediately to a Steady State Economy .
Green Economics. Buildings like trees. Cradle-to-cradle design. C’mon now… it aint freaking rocket science. And forget the “tolerant liberal” crap. When you’re pushing a shift from a war economy to a green economy and somebody peeps up with that tired old shit about the “military” defending our “freedoms,” give ‘em the shut-the-fuck-up-you’re-not-ready-for-the-grownup-table treatment. Because they’re not. They’re medieval serfs driving cars. Fuckem.
Maybe it’s time to be a “Liberal hot-head.”
