Eight years of George Bush has changed us in many ways. Perhaps the most insidious and dangerous has been the rather pervasive addiction to shared outrage. In the early days, we learned to scan the news for the latest abomination from the Bushies and then send it to our friends or post it on some leftie website where we could all be horrified together. Over time, this became almost an addictive behavior, with the periods of lull in the news leaving us restless and hungry for more fodder. Needless to say, George Bush and his crew have provided a mountain of damage and abuse with which to feed our habit over the last several years – Iraq, Katrina, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Attorney-gate, to name but the most notorious - and our fury has known no bounds.
But then a funny thing happened. The primaries took off, and we remembered what it was like to have leaders speak for us and talk in coherent and inspiring sentences. George Bush started to fade into the mists of Lame Duckhood (even though, in reality, he still remains an uncontrollable danger until he is out of office). Unfortunately, old habits die hard, and our addiction to outrage did not disappear, it merely mutated. Like a road that suddenly forks, our need to focus anger and blame split in two, with one half enraged at Hillary Clinton and the other at Barack Obama, each half with its websites on which to share a righteous outrage at every little word or event that might fit into our angry, indignant narrative.
I think it is time for us to take a good, hard look at this pattern. If our party is to come together, it will not be while we scan the headlines for another proof of how awful and incorrigible our chosen scapegoat remains. This is the mind of the irrational mob, searching for reasons to hate and scorn. It was appropriate during the height of the Dark Days of Bush in order to keep us energized and fighting the lethal encroachment of so many lies and misdeeds. But now we must embrace our candidates despite their flaws, and let go of this tendency to scorn and be consumed with righteous disdain. Both candidates have worked hard to serve our country, and only a focus on this rather than the consuming, obsessive acrimony will move us toward a repair of the party and a victory in November.
also posted at my website
http://starlightnews.com/wordpress
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