What has happened to our level of outrage in this country. The Bush administration has been responsible for so many terrible things in our country. Why aren't more people outraged?
Perhaps the answer is that our capacity to be outraged is being desensitized. Just like the villagers began to ignore the little boy who called wolf, just like your body can turn off pain after a while, just like your brain can cut out noise or can convince your optic system to flip images from upside down to rightside up to accommodate, perhaps our brains cannot absorb the continual assault of outrageous events and we end up no longer able to be outraged by them.
Is this something the Bush administration understands, and they are able to get away with outrageous conduct because they know that the more outrageous actions they take, the less likely people are to protest because their capacity for outrage has been desensitized.
Desensitization has been studied by psychologists. For example, in a study of continued exposure to violent rap lyrics by James D. Johnson, Lee Anderson Jackson, and Leslie Gatto of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington:
Their findings suggest that violent rap lyrics have a numbing effect on listeners. This numbing or desensitization subsequently increases their threshold for tolerating violence and allows them to more readily accept violent behavior. Harvard Political Review Online
In an article for World Net Daily (admittedly a rightwing website), the writer also discusses desensitization. Although he is saying that the liberals are desensitizing people's responses to issues, his basic point applies across the board.
Basically, desensitization means if you repeat something outrageous – even something outrageously false – over and over and over again, people will gradually become less and less outraged and eventually accept it. Marketing of Evil
Desensitization to corporate malfeasance is discussed in another article:
As seems to be the case with many startling events, the first occurrence of an Enron-like event is public outrage. The second time a similar event occurs, outrage is likely to decrease. Enron and subsequent corporate scandals seem to cause a "desensitization" effect. Nursing Home Litigation article
Tom Ball, commenting on an article about Pat Robertson in Political Cortex, voiced exactly what I have been thinking when he said:
Outrage has been abolished through a carefully worked campaign of desensitization -- or so it would seem.
How often can one express outrage -- with no favorable outcome -- and continue to maintain that degree of outrage as numerous future events warrant?
I think it all boils down to 'outrage fatigue' -- closely aligned with 'scandal fatigue'.
Everyone thinks the outrageous, unacceptable behavior will eventually come home to roost, yet it never seems to. That is painfully frustrating, over and over again.
After a while, a defense mechanism kicks in that simply prevents us from getting outraged in the first place. Political Cortex
Here, in no particular order, is my list of outrages perpetrated by the Bush administration. Feel free to add any that I have missed. (Hopefully I don't need to add links to each of these outrages.)
- Decimation of the Bill of Rights
- Lying about the reasons to go to war in Iraq
- Going to war with no plan for implementing the war and no exit strategy.
- Refusing to accept advice from others on how to end the war.
- Condoning and abetting fraud by private contractors in Iraq.
- Ignoring the problems caused by Hurricane Katrina and failing to support reconstruction activities in New Orleans.
- Condoning and abetting fraud by private contractors in New Orleans and other Katrina communities.
- Failure to hold anyone at the top accountable for any outrageous activity. (Abu Ghraib, Haditha, Katrina--was Brownie really at the top?, etc.)
- Advancing cronyism to a new level--appointing the best crony, not the best person for important/crucial positions.
- Refusal to address the problems of climate change and reversing US policies that would have helped mitigate the problems.
- Causing a major loss of respect by the rest of the world for the United States. Squandering the good will generated by 9/11.
- Furthering moral bankruptcy in this country.
a. Promoting religious hypocrisy
b. Cynically exploiting religious beliefs of others for his own
benefit
- Creating further economic disparity between the rich and poor.
- Running the war in Iraq on our grandchildren's credit cards.
- Using misleading titles to hide the true purpose of legislation
a. The Clear Skies initiative
b. No Child Left Behind
c. Military Commissions Act
d. Patriot Act
e. Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act
- Glorifying mediocrity--a poor goal for this country which used to pride itself on its high standards.
- Getting us involved in bogus wars, but refusing to deal with the problems in other parts of the world like Darfur.
This list is not complete, but it certainly shows why our capacity for outrage has diminished. We are overloaded.
I think we should develop Outrage levels for the country, similar to the Threat of Terrorism levels issued by Homeland Security. People who are feeling complacent about our country could check the Outrage level and see that they ought to be a little more worried.