Subtitled: the lifeblood of  propaganda

This emotion needs a close examination. Especially now. Especially because it is an “adult” emotion that is used to manipulate people, en masse.  Because this emotion is not present in babies and little children,  it is built by social interactions, lists of “shoulds” and buckets of indignation. It is created. And, it can be undone.

In fact, it needs to be undone by the sober examination of each thinking person determining from whence it came. Some say it evolves from people we know, like family and social groups, but it also comes from the media: TV people, the news, our social beliefs, and of course, our chosen leaders.

Why do I say it is manufactured, not real? Because you never saw a baby or young child indignant or outraged. You may see an angry baby, you may see a child disappointed or upset, but you can’t see outrage because it needs a sophisticated belief system to underpin it or it won’t work.

See outrage is concocted of a bit of upset (any kind will do, even run-of-the-mill fear or sadness) combined with a mental construction that things should be different than they are. That that person should know better, or that situation shouldn’t have happened like that.

At it’s core, it feels a bit like anger, but it is not that simple, and it seems to persist longer. This “feeling” requires ideas to make it work. And these ideas are worth investigating carefully. They may or may not be shared (think how some are horrified by blatant racism, while others carry on unknowing. Or some say kneeling during a song means one hates a nation, while others say it means love for principals we admire).

See, I’ve noticed one commonality to the Trumpets, the GOP, ‘Dem Libs,’ the Progressives and others: it is the emotion of  outrage (and its ugly cousin righteous indignation). Everyone seems to be doing it lately.

Trump’s supporters imbibed the stuff most deeply prior to the election, and with this emotional energy, helped him get elected.  Now these same folks get fed a steady stream fed to them by their man, who never lets them down. He can resurrect an irrelevant matter, just at the right time to whip up a grand case of outrage in his followers. Hillary seems to be his favorite label.

But it was not just people on the right who imbibed. Liberals have had a long history of indulging in the stuff. Remember this quote: “if you are not outraged, you are not paying attention”?

My own leanings left is clear, yet I’m beginning to see the problems with spending any time enduring this particular emotion. I’ve noticed that outrage, while great for evoking conversation and energized upset, it is not that great for being effective.

Outrage, on its own, is not strategic. It’s not creative. It’s not active. It is Cousin Karen ragging about the bad clerk at the discount store. It’s my friends wringing hands about policies that harm them. It’s my political pals freaking about the democratic processes falling by way of kleptocratic ones. It’s also me, quipping endless examples of right-winger’s hypocritical ways. Ooops — hypocritcal: another creation that assumes human consistency.  Another “should” that just “isn’t.”

So, why would anyone want to feel outrage? Or keep going back to their sources for more? Why do we all do it — on the left and the right sides of the fence? I’m not sure, except to guess that it feels energizing. It feels like living. Like being the operative word.

I know what also feels energizing: walks in nature, hugs and play with my kids, exercise, making things. This energy feels even and good. It just is.

Outrage requires something else to exist: ideas, beliefs and reports. Righteous indignation usually requires a sprinkling of religiosity too, but I don’t want to expound on every varietal. Ideas and beliefs are cultivated over time and grow from people and culture teaching us to conform to basic behaviors. It’s kinda cool in a way, we develop tons of ideas of what should be from witnessing the judgements and failures of others. We learn to behave based upon them, and most of us share great commonalities in our adhesion to the same ideas.

And then there’s folks like Trump. People who blast through civil mores, toss them to the wind in a cloud of gold dust and catchy phrases. He cheats, he lies, he steals, he blames, threatens and denies. But — and its a huge but — he delivers the goods. To all of us. He delivers outrage to those who love him, and those who hate him.

So, if you really want to see him fall, there is much work to be done by each one of us. We need to take a super-close look at our addiction to outrage and all its ugly cousins. We need to see if we feed on this feeling, or if we may be masking a more basic, natural emotion. We may really feel fearful, sad or tired.  We may also be “doing” outrage instead of doing community action. Uh oh.

We need to look clearly at our most reliable source (the media), and figure out if it (writ large) has our best interest at heart, or has simply found a way to manipulate us as a group? What is it we are supposed to do again? Oh yeah… buy stuff.

Propaganda’s power is not just being pointed at one group (to the dummies that believe that crap), but to all of us, by way of manipulating our human emotional operating system. Glut the machine with an addictive feeling, keep people angry but not effective, and the forces that can provide the stuff,  carry on indefinitely.