The Outrage Machine
It happened innocently enough. I was chaperoning my daughter’s choir trip to Disney World. We were there in the Magic Kingdom and her director had allowed the children to disperse on their own. So, we could also disperse on our own. It was mostly a fantastic day. Waiting times were shorter for one person and I was able to ride almost everything. Unfortunately, shorter wait times did not mean no wait times. I had to wait 40 minutes at the Haunted House and it was the worst 40 minutes of the day.
A little boy and his family walked by. No one knew them. He and his sister were wearing princess dresses. He and his attire dominated the conversation for the next ten to 15 minutes. Was he trans? Was he gay? Was he a bisexual? Was he a metrosexual? Or, was he simply a four year old buy wearing a dress. Moreover, why should I, these people, or anyone else really care all that much? Out of thousands of kids in the park that day, he was one little boy wearing a dress.
Of course, they went on to extoll Ron DeSantis and his culture wars with Disney. One of them was diabetic like me. She was testing her blood sugar using the old-fashioned prick method and complained about it. I thought about telling her about my Freestyle Libre. I decided not to get involved. The Freestyle Libre can be expensive without good insurance. Yet. here was a perfect microcosm of what the outrage machine has wrought. People back a party that explicitly aims to keep them subservient with inferior care and torches them economically at every turn. Yet, they hate the LGTBQ+ community. They hate the trans kids. They hate woke.
Somehow we have succumbed to the politics of scale. The outrage machine draws us in too. They want us to react. They need us to react. So, they can use that reaction to further rile up the base. Listen, do you hear these libtards defending drag queens and transkids? The ultimate answer is that we have to care less. That statement is very intentional. We should continue to care, but we have to focus our energies on things that directly impact us. There are people here that are directly impacted by these things. We have to be an ally for them, but we also cannot forget the politics of scale.
I explain this by drawing three circles. The inside circle is about us and us alone. Does the particular issue at hand have an effect on me personally? If the answer is no then I move to the second circle. Does it impact someone I love and care about (be it family or friends)? In some cases this will literally be true. Obviously, we should continue to fight in that circumstance. What I imagine though is that most people (at least the ones rabidly for or against something) may have someone they know that this particular issue impacts. Worse, some people may not know anyone personally impacted.
We cannot allow the outrage machine to draw us into unnecessary conflict. If I casually know someone impacted or know no one impacted then why I am fighting on this issue? Shouldn’t my time be better spent on issues that directly impact me or my family? It doesn’t mean we stop fighting for the rights of the disenfranchised. It doesn’t mean we give up hope on a more inclusive society. What it does mean that if we focus on meat and potato issues where we have near universal agreement across political spectrums then the so-called bigots and homophobes will lose. Outrage and bigotry is all they have. If you take that away from them by ignoring the incendiary rhetoric then you can get them out of office and ultimately out of our lives.