We all like to complain, at least I do. But nobody loves a complainer. Complaining is a whiny, weak, ineffective habit, not likely to produce any result except irritation. Our angry modern world demands something more robust. Any grievance must be inflated until it reaches the level of outrage, at which point it becomes worthy of political attention and media amplification.
The public world seems more emotional and less rational than it was even twenty years ago. Television commentators and politicians rage against some injustice or other every day. In normal life, they may be perfectly reasonable people, but given a camera and a microphone, they become the very incarnation of public indignation about problems that they, or you, or I, cannot possibly do anything about. Like Howard Beale in the old movie network they cry: “We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore.” But they do take “it,” whatever it is, and do nothing, because outrage is a fire that must never be allowed to go out. Most of this emotion is about as authentic as the passion of an actor playing King Lear.
This sad habit of artificial outrage comes to us all the way down from the complainer-in-chief, who has turned grievance into an art form. Whatever it is, it is disgraceful and someone else’s fault. This public catharsis is supposed to make us feel good, and it must work for some people. It tells us what we should be angry about today and promotes the reassuring feeling that something is being accomplished. How could so much public outrage not accomplish something? We can feel morally improved and self-righteous just because we heard about it and shared the indignation.
[Politicians love this device. Synthetic indignation gets people on their side. If some red-faced blowhard is almost apoplectic with righteous anger onscreen, there must be a good reason for it. But there isn’t. The man – usually a man - is either out of control or putting on an act that is all too well calculated. The trouble with outrage is that it is blind, like loyalty or faith. People performing outrage don’t want to conciliate or negotiate; they want to fight. In the end, they often do.
This habit of putting anger center stage leaves the calmer and more reasonable part of the population – the vast majority of us - at a psychological disadvantage. Our little complaints don’t rise to the level of grievances. We can’t very well be outraged about not being outraged. We can’t build a winning argument on the basis that things aren’t as bad as they seem, or that some modest improvements might be made. Any such thoughtful suggestions will be drowned out by the growls and shrieks of the professionally outraged. Collectively, we’re not happy, and the United States is now twenty-second on the International Happiness index. I’m sure that this grumbling atmosphere of discontent has a lot to do with it.
High emotion is exciting and always bad for us. So let me end with a gem of wisdom from the eighteenth-century conservative writer Edmund Burke, who knew a thing or two about extreme politics and lived in a century in which rational thought was greatly valued. He wrote: “Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build in a hundred years.” Burke was wrong about a lot of things, but for more than two turbulent centuries, he has been absolutely right about that.
