Outrage: Don’t Smoke It

Outrage is a narcotic, circulated in poor neighborhoods, peddled by publishers of cheap daily newspapers and commercial television stations. Once sampled, outrage is irresistible and the victim is quickly addicted. The outrage addict needs regular doses of quickly conceived public condemnation, implication by rumor, plots and conspiracy, the very things commercial news media are so good at drumming up. In the addicted state, the outraged subject is bereft of disciplined thought caught in the zealous quest for miscreants, finding them everywhere. The more wickedness they find, the more the gratification. Each righteous pleasure magnifies the addiction. Soon the world is awash with crime and citizens are pouring their resources into rapid judgments and final condemnations.

Outrage is an addiction largely of those with less than perfect intellectual discipline. It is a symptom of least-common-denominator education, education to the level of quick newspaper reading and talk show radio discourse. Where in England during the last century at least, for example, diction and local dialect were limiters of mobility, in modern democracy, it is the presence of self-righteousness derived from addiction to outrage.