Political Outrage
From an essay by Mark Morford:
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. (Link to essay)
Thanks to Webster69 for the link.
I don’t know about you, but I definitely have my days when the sheer mass of shit that is coming out of our politicians/”leaders” makes me want to bury my head and heart in the sand. I think the key to fighting outrage fatigue, the key to keep fighting, is to express outrage in a productive/creative manner rather than keep it bottled up inside you only to spill out through snide comments to the tv or the radio or anger-filled comments to someone else’s blog post. Writing letters to the editor? Writing your congresspeople? Creating a dance/theatre/video piece that expresses your outrage? Singing protest songs? I figure there’s as many options as there are people and the trick is to find what way works best for you to both express your outrage and to add, even in a small way, to the movement toward peace and justice.
Technorati Tags: morford, olbermann, bush, politics
Powered by ScribeFire.