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Saturday, June 15, 2019

Numb

I heard this morning a news commentator describe the current character of reaction to Donald Trump's ongoing circus of reprehensible remarks as "outrage fatigue". I had said something similar in a previous post. It seems that a person's stomach for outrage can hold just so much. It becomes something else. It becomes numbness. It becomes apathy. Time was when I would respond immediately to a reprehensible statement from Trump, expressing my disgust and disbelief so that I might receive in turn an acknowledgment from others, an agreement, a sharing of the sanity still active in the world. 

It is interesting to me that responses fell away first from my American acquaintances, my fellow countrymen and women, to whom, it seemed, this should have mattered most of all. It was the non-Americans here in Bali who clung longest to outrage--Lithuanian, Australian, British, German, Chinese, Indonesian. How is  it that they cared more than we? Is outrage easier from a great distance? Is outrage easier according to degree of separation? Or is the typical American simply more prone to apathy. It is said that historically in combat American soldiers, though better supplied and equipped than their opponents, have been more likely under pressure to fail in morale, to give up. Is this the trait now on display in the life of our nation? Have we become so feeble?


Or is the problem more that our outrage dies in the air, unreceived? Those whom we have placed in high positions have gone deaf. When even the officers cower and shrink away on the battlefield, is it any wonder that the soldiers throw up their hands in surrender?  


So I rarely comment now on our deplorable leader, for I too have become apathetic, and know now that nothing will be done, nothing will change. This is us. These are the limp and sagging United States of America, tired, listless, anemic, numb. Heartbreaking. 


2 comments:

Mb said...

The elected officials are not listening to the constituents. They care only of themselves. Letters and calls fall on deaf ears unless you are a big donor.

R.W. Boughton said...

Mb--Yes, and if you're a big donor, you're probably too busy enjoying Trump's tax giveaway to the very rich.