Outrage Fatigue

I read this quote last October (2006) over at Susan's Visual Voice blog, and it's still timely:

The effort to say nothing that will offend anyone is to say nothing that will benefit anyone. Likewise, a culture that values above all else not offending anyone is a culture whose sole purpose is to maintain superficiality and polite dishonesty among its citizens. It may be the same for the Church.~ Roy Howard

Polite dishonesty. I spend so much time being politely dishonest, embroidering my life and interactions with so many little rules, so many little reminder notes, that I start to lose myself. I don't even know that I'm gone. I turn the other cheek so often that my head spins around in lazy circles like a rotating dessert case down at the corner diner. I'm sweet as pie; would you like me warmed up, sugar? Dollop of whipped cream? Cherry on top?

And in this pre-election season, with the Candidate-critters scurrying around like earnest squirrels, collecting nuts and garnering votes for 2008, there's enough polite dishonesty in the air to set off every bullshit detector in America. My outrage filter is clogged and needs to be replaced so often that I'm experiencing outrage fatigue. I'm tired of being angry, of reading the headlines every morning and being shocked at the pettiness and hatred and bigotry in this country and... and... after a while, I just run out of words. I scan the back pages of newspapers, pick through buried text on websites, I listen to the voices in the electronic wind, and can I find glints of gold? Can I find facts that haven't been stretched like saltwater taffy, bland pap to fill our hungry tummys and make us warm and sleepy? Can I find any indication that we're not being told to live in an epic series of fantasy novels? "Fairy Tales From The Executive Branch"... I would even settle for the naive realism of "My Pet Goat" at this point.

I also hear the rallying cries of bullies in their pulpits, pointing fingers, brandishing verbal torches and pitchfork rhetoric. I hear them spit words like "immigrant" and "alien"... I hear them sneer "gay" and "agenda"... I hear what they say about citizenship and marriage, "family values" and morals, and I hear that they would never call these people son, daughter, brother, sister, father, mother, or beloved. They barely acknowledge them as fellow humans, as real people, let alone family. And they most certainly do not recognize them in their exclusive clubs, in the gated communities of their locked hearts, or in the safety and comfort of their climate-controlled churches.