Don’t let media barkers work up our outrage
Outrage sells, and it helps political careers. But it doesn’t do anything to help us forge ahead, or to even acknowledge all the progress we’ve made.
It’s making a lot of us crazy: Everywhere we’re encouraged to be worked up and angry.
We’re being played like fiddles. Outrage sells, and it helps political careers. It’s Facebook and Twitter and online feeds tailored to our particular persuasions, and TV and radio and newspaper columnists — there’s no escape.
But what if we want to consider an issue without being outraged and angry?
Suppose we want to weigh the facts, without their political implications?
Good luck! It’s all politics and outrage and anger.
A Wall Street Journal columnist, commenting on the recent United Nations report on climate change (it’s real, and humans are causing it) wonders “why the progressive greens and the climate press ... believe it is effective politics to describe
life on Earth as at the edge of a cataclysmic apocalypse ...
These claims are beyond any politics that normal people can process.”
Wait. What about the scientific facts in the report? Are all facts inherently political?
When did that happen to discourse in America, to conversations with neighbors?
Arguably, Americans may have never been confronted with so many issues to be outraged about. But take a deep breath. The view from 30,000 feet shows that when the dust settles, things get done. It’s time to recognize the steps taken toward our goals. Why not stand behind those trying to improve things, rather than marinating in our polarizing urges?
At the height of the pandemic, the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan brought economic relief to individuals and families, providing help with food, rent and health care to people who lost their jobs and financial assistance to small businesses.
Much is left to debate and resolve, but the Senate recently gave bipartisan approval to a $1 trillion infrastructure bill to rebuild the nation’s deteriorating roads and bridges, improve our ports, and fund new climate and broadband initiatives.
It’s the largest investment in our country since at least the 1960s. The United States lags sorely behind other countries when it comes to the infrastructure that permits efficient operation of business and commerce.
Passage of that bill showed Americans — and the world — that the U.S. government can still tackle big problems. It showed we still have what it takes. The Senate minority leader, who supported the infrastructure bill, conceded that the American people didn’t mandate that government “do absolutely nothing.”
In the ‘30s, FDR’s secretary of labor, Frances Perkins, champion of the New Deal, put it this way: “The people are what matter to government, and government should give all the people under its jurisdiction the best possible life.”
Anyone who has stepped outside this summer, or driven on a city street or an interstate (and over a shaky bridge), or had to ration water out West or bail water out of a flooded basement in Michigan or suffer devastating floods in Tennessee or wildfires or a condo pancaking in Miami appreciates how government could act to improve life.
Recently House Democrats stopped squabbling and passed a $3.5 trillion blueprint for a budget. This would include federal support for child and elder care, universal preschool, paid family leave, an expansion of Medicare and a major assault on the drivers of climate change.
Of course, we aren’t there yet. There will be brutal fighting — and then compromise. But let’s recognize that we’ve taken giant steps in the right direction.
“Not only are we building the physical infrastructure of America, we are building the human infrastructure of America to enable many more people to participate in the success of our economy and the growth of our society,” said the House speaker.
If we take another deep breath, we can recognize the phenomenal success of vaccines against the COVID-19 virus.
Yes, we’re falling short of the ideal, too many remain unvaccinated, and ICU beds are filling up with patients afflicted with the delta variant. But because millions have been vaccinated, countless lives are being spared every day.
I’m convinced that once people stop relying on social media and misinformation, and more infected Americans publicly admit they wish they’d been vaccinated, we’ll get ahead of the virus, as we did with diphtheria, pertussis, measles and countless other diseases.
We’ll stop being outraged at Dr. Anthony Fauci and other infectious disease experts who are fighting on behalf of all of us. Imagine a lightweight like Tucker Carlson given a bullhorn to call Fauci “the guy who created COVID.” How has communication so degenerated in America?
Americans need to regain the trust in science they had during the polio epidemic in the 1950s, when parents calmly lined their kids up for the vaccine. Americans’ attitude then was “we’re all in this together.” The likes of Tucker Carlson were only a flicker then. Of course, people could see the effects of polio in the thousands of children walking with crutches or dying, despite the help of “iron lungs.”
I wish the vaccine hesitant could look through the glass of an ICU today at kids with the COVID-19 virus struggling to breathe.
Whatever the other issues provoking outrage — immigration, voting rights, workforce needs, state audits of the “stolen election,” we can choose to act again like we’re all in this together and recognize those trying to help, trying to get to the bottom of our problems, trying to get at the facts, the truth.
Take a deep breath. Outrage just blurs our vision. And makes media moguls and TV personalities rich.
Take a deep breath. Outrage just blurs our vision.
And makes media moguls and TV personalities rich.