Being an American has suddenly become freaking exhausting. With the dawn of each day comes some new public insult about which I am supposed to be outraged. Some B-lister says something offensive on Twitter, and all hell breaks loose. Boycotts get formed. Demands for firing ring out on social media. Then, someone from the other tribe starts with the charges of hypocrisy, since just a few weeks/months ago some B-lister from the other tribe said something offensive but they still have a job. Then it becomes a contest about which insult was more grevious. Is sexism worse than racism? What about homophobia? Where does it rank on the hierarchy of offense? Once it becomes a debate about who is at the top of the greviance totem pole, then it’s full on war. How dare you complain about mere sexism, when I have to deal with systemic racism? Then somebody on Twitter points out that they carry the quadruple burden of being a disabled, lesbian, immigrant person of color. Immediately, a GoFundMe page gets established, and straight, white, woke males are strongly encouraged to belly up to the reparations bar and fork it over.
Literally every day in my country, somebody, somewhere is pissing somebody else off. No sooner had we settled in to the Rosanne Barr thing when Samantha Bee steps up to the megaphone for her fifteen minutes of fame. Then, out of nowhere, people from my tribe start ringing their hands over someone named Joy Reid. (I’ll have to take their word for it, but apparently she’s on TV in the morning.) After Googling her I discover that she has a history of homophobic social media posts. When they first came to light, she claimed that nefarious actors had hacked her, (the my dog ate my homework excuse for the digital age). Whatever. Eventually, it all blew over, and she’s back in business...I think. Anyway, this was given as evidence of liberal hypocrisy...or something. In America it’s getting to the place where if we didn’t have double standards, we wouldn’t have any standards at all!
The thing is...I just can’t keep up with it all. I don’t think I’m much different from anyone else in that as a human being I have a limited reservoir of outrage. I can’t live my entire life being buffeted from one insult to another. At some point, for self preservation purposes, I have to decide to let stuff go. I mean, if I hear someone like Rosanne Barr say something stupid and offensive, don’t I have to consider the source? Do I have a reasonable expectation that a gasbag like Barr wouldn’t say something stupid and offensive? No, I do not. It’s what she does. Every B-lister that lands in the news for outrageous comments all have one thing in common...they are all desperately competing for eyeballs. With the proliferation of social media, and the millions of voices it magnifies, civility and kindness just wont do if you want to make a splash. In the old days the saying went...the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Today, at least on social media, it’s more like...the provocateur gets the clicks. When we allow ourselves to be offended by them, they are empowered, and we are reduced.
Of course, I can already hear the reaction to this view...That’s easy for you to say! You’re a straight, white, male, small business-owning, Christian, libertarian-leaning suburbanite. What the hell do you know??!! Probably nothing.
There’s an awful lot of blame to go around for the shocking disappearance of basic decency in our public discourse. It’s been slipping away for years. But, I feel confident that the current occupant of the White House shares a respectable amount of responsibility for its recently dramatic decay. The first Tweeting President has sowed the wind with a million juvenile rants and petty insults. Now, we are all reaping the whirlwind. The question is, how do we ever put the genie back in the bottle after he’s gone? I don’t think we can. This is and forever will be...the new normal. Yay.
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