You surely are, yes? Outraged, that is? Seething and churning and burning up inside, deeply upset about that thing that just happened and which you did not want to occur in that particular way even though it totally did? Damn right.
Here's the good news: You are not alone. Nearly all good Americans are outraged about something. This is what makes us good Americans. This is how we know we're alive, what defines us versus them. Ill-conceived outrage is our heritage, our birthright, our grand legacy as a superpriviledged first-world culture. Goddamn this miserable world, and have you seen my text-messaging bill? Outrageous!
To be sure, outrage comes in many forms, flavors and degrees of serration. But the truly modern American kind can only be found by employing a certain wonderful, proprietary matrix, a formula of fury and frustration we as a country live by like some sort of mantra, tattooed onto our little red, white and blue bones.
It goes like this: the more ridiculous, tiny, arcane or completely irrational the object of your outrage is, the more you know you have attained ultimate freedom. You are living the real American Dream, hereby defined as being endlessly upset and miserable about totally meaningless bulls--t for no valid reason whatsoever because you have everything you could ever want or need in this life, ever. ...
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